Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS HULL BILL (By Order)

BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL (By Order)

BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL (By Order)

HYTHE, KENT, MARINA BILL (By Order)

HYTHE MARINA VILLAGE (SOUTHAMPTON)

WAVESCREEN BILL (By Order)

INTERNATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK BILL (By Order)

ISLE OF WIGHT BILL (By Order)

LONDON UNDERGROUND VICTORIA BILL (By Order)

WENTWORTH ESTATE BILL (By Order)

BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE SOUTHBANK BILL (By Order)

BROMLEY LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL
(CRYSTAL PALACE) BILL (By Order)

CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL (By Order)

REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Thursday 23 February.

PENZANCE ALBERT PIER EXTENSION BILL (By Order)

Read a Second time and committeed.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Contaminated Food

Mr. Wray: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the contamination of food supplies in the United Kingdom.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Richard Ryder): Expert and comprehensive monitoring work is undertaken by a large range of scientists, academics and others. This surveillance work ensures that, if action is needed to ensure or enhance safety margins, it is taken swiftly and on a firm basis of scientific study and assessment.

Mr. Wray: Is the Minister aware that the London Food Commission considers that the Government have acted deplorably by their cover-up of food poisoning? According to its statistics, one in 12,000 eggs is contaminated and since 30 million eggs are distributed every day in Britain, 2,500 eggs per day must be contaminated. Will the Minister take into consideration that the average person eats 151 eggs a year, so one in 79 people in Britain will eat a contaminated egg and the average person will eat two infected eggs in a year—[Interruption.] Does the Minister agree that the Government have failed to face up to the problem and that he should resign?

Mr. Ryder: There has been no cover-up. Clearly we take this matter very seriously, but it must be seen in perspective. The hon. Gentleman fails to do that.

Sir Hal Miller: Will my hon. Friend confirm the stand taken by the Foreign Office arid by the Minister for Trade during last night's debate on the EEC position on hormones in beef, that the Government act only on the basis of scientific evidence, unlike the Labour party spokesman who claimed that we should act without evidence? In that context, how does he rate the evidence from the London Food Commission about a multiplier of 12,000, as we have just heard?

Mr. Ryder: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Beggs: Speaking on behalf of the United Kingdom, will the Minister make it absolutely clear, and not leave it to the Minister responsible for Northern Ireland, that food products from Northern Ireland have an excellent health record?

Mr. Ryder: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Robert Hicks: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is the obligation of any responsible Government to inform and not to alarm, and that the recent allegations about the desirability of eating certain foodstuffs are misplaced and in many cases irresponsible? Will he respond to those allegations, made without scientific evidence, in a very robust manner?

Mr. Ryder: The Government will continue to answer those charges in a clear and robust manner. The problems must be put into perspective but the Government take their responsibilities for food safety extremely seriously.

Mr. Martlew: Does the Minister agree that, in 1983, the Government failed to ban the sale of so-called green top mil—untreated milk—whereas they banned it in Scotland? Does he accept that, as a result of that inaction, eight people, including a baby, died in the Calder Valley area of west Yorkshire? Is it not a fact that the Government have waited six years to ban such milk because of pressure from the farming lobby?

Mr. Ryder: On 3 February, my right hon. Friend the Minister announced that, under the Food Act 1984, we will consult to see whether a ban should be imposed. The consultation document will be made available early next week.

Mr. Charles Wardle: As well as ensuring the highest standards of hygiene in animal husbandry and food processing, has it not become essential to emphasise the importance of hygiene in the preparation of food in the home, in case the normal commonsense standards of preparation do not always prevail?

Mr. Ryder: It is precisely because of that matter that, next month, the Department of Health and my Department will launch a joint food hygiene in the home campaign to ram home the points that have been set out by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Geraint Howells: Does the Minister agree that too many contradictory statements about food poisoning have been made by various Government Departments over the past month? Does he further agree that it is time for the Prime Minister to make a statement to the House to allay the fears of consumers and producers alike?

Mr. Ryder: In his speech on Tuesday my right hon. Friend the Minister stated that there is no complacency and no conspiracy. The Prime Minister, in answering questions later that same day, set out in precise detail the Government's view on pasteurised and unpasteurised milk.

Mr. Paice: Does my hon. Friend take comfort from the fact that nearly a week has passed since the last scare story about British food? Does he agree that much of the furore has been blown out of all proportion by the press, which has sensationalised a genuine but tiny problem?

Mr. Ryder: My hon. Friend makes his point effectively.

Dr. David Clark: If there is no cover-up or complacency about food contamination, will the Minister confirm that the application by the Monsanto drug company for a product licence for bovine somatotropin-produced milk has been rejected on safety grounds, not once, but twice by his own scientifically composed veterinary products committee?

Mr. Ryder: This question is about the contamination of food. The veterinary products committee has said that there is no evidence that milk from BST-treated cows is dangerous.

Mr. John Marshall: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the standard of hygiene in food factories in this country is second to none? Does he agree that it is high time for those who speak on this matter to show a sense of responsibility rather than to create hysteria?

Mr. Ryder: It is precisely because we are not complacent about this issue that the Government have

been preparing a major food Bill since October 1987, when my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary issued a press release on the matter. More than 500 organisations have been consulted about what should go into that new food Bill. The new food Bill will be set before Parliament as soon as is practicable. There is no doubt that there are no grounds for complacency, and the Government are showing that to be the case.

Farming Diversification

Mr. Kennedy: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what assessment he has made of the knock-on effects of farming diversification on the sheep sector.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Donald Thompson): The aim of the farm diversification grant scheme is to encourage the creation of new businesses rather than the displacement of existing farming activities, so the answer is none.

Mr. Kennedy: Is the Minister aware that that answer will only confirm increasing worry, not least among hill and upland farmers, about the knock-on effect of diversification? As the Minister will appreciate, if more producers opt for sheep production, the increase in the number of sheep will lead to a corresponding decrease in the level of support. Therefore, will he make sure that any new sheepmeat regime will take account of the need for generous headage payments, not least in areas such as the north of Scotland, where agricultural activity is already stretched to the margins, if not beyond?

Mr. Thompson: It is important that when, in a few years' time, my right hon. Friend renegotiates the sheep meat regime, he takes careful note of those areas of Great Britain which have traditionally, and so well, bred sheep and improved the quality by 77 per cent. since 1980. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will do just that.

Mr. John Greenway: Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that the Government are continuing to pay farmers in the less-favoured areas through the hill livestock compensatory allowance scheme is a major factor in supporting sheep farmers in the less-favoured areas? May we have an assurance that when the Government negotiate the new sheepmeat regime—unlike in the case of the beef regime which was announced recently—we shall have a regime which reflects the different requirements for sheep farming in northern Europe as opposed to southern Europe?

Mr. Thompson: We already have a scheme which reflects the differences in Great Britain compared with the rest of Europe, although that does not seem to please all farmers. We must, of course, do what we can to ensure that the high quality that exists in this branch of farming is not disadvantaged in the whole of Europe.

Sir Hector Monro: Does my hon. Friend agree that the higher up the hill we go the harder it becomes to diversify? Will he therefore give every encouragement possible to increasing the hill compensatory allowance, to the suckler cow subsidy and to maintaining the sheep premium? That is essential if we are to keep a viable rural economy.

Mr. Thompson: The very basis of the rural economy is a strong farming economy, especially in areas such as that which my hon. Friend represents.

Nitrate Pollution

Mr. Pike: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he proposes to take to designate areas vulnerable to nitrate pollution following the European Community directive on nitrates in water.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor): The European Community directive is only a proposal at this stage. It will have to be examined carefully and agreed by the Council of Ministers before the question of implementation, including the designation of vulnerable areas, arises.

Mr. Pike: I thank the Minister for that answer. Does he recognise the widespread and justifiable public concern that exists about the levels of nitrates in water? May we have an assurance that when the matter comes before the Council of Ministers, the British Government will not seek to undermine any proposals or seek derogation but will take a positive attitude to any steps to control nitrates?

Mr. MacGregor: As for the proposals which come within my sphere of agriculture, the hon. Gentleman will know that the Water Bill already provides for the National Rivers Authority to make proposals to the Secretary of State for the Environment who, after consultation with my Ministry and any necessary public inquiry, could make an order, subject to parliamentary approval, to introduce protection zones. We have already said that we would be prepared to do that if we cannot get voluntary agreements with farmers within those zones, and to take compulsory powers as a fallback. So already we are making it clear that we will take a series of actions to deal with the nitrates question. Of course, we must also take into account the progress of negotiations on the directive in the European Community.

Sir Anthony Grant: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is almost as much nonsense being talked about nitrates in water as there is about food at the present time? Is he further aware that in areas where there is the lowest level of nitrates, such as north Wales, there is the highest level of stomach cancer, whereas in areas where there is the highest level of nitrates, such as East Anglia, stomach cancer is at the lowest level? The message should be "Come to East Anglia if you want to avoid getting stomach cancer." In any event, does my right hon. Friend agree that the excellent provisions of the Water Bill will improve the standard and quality of water and that the sooner it is on the statute book the better?

Mr. MacGregor: More and more people go to East Anglia for all kinds of reasons, perhaps even including the one mentioned by my hon. Friend—though we certainly do not want too many people going there. It is very often the case that the incidence of stomach cancer falls below average in areas with above-average levels of nitrate in the water supplies. Nevertheless, medical advice is that we should continue to keep nitrate levels below 50mg, to allow for a very good safety margin. That is what we seek to achieve. Where there are problems, we propose taking steps to deal with them.

Mr. Dalyell: From whom is the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food getting its research advice about nitrates?

Mr. MacGregor: From a variety of sources, including Rothamsted—which shows that it is a very complex issue. The measures that we take contain a variety of ingredients, usually depending on local circumstances.

Egg Producers

Mr. Adley: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many individual applications he received for compensation from egg producers; and how many were accepted.

Mr. MacGregor: Of 48 applications confirmed by producers to cull hens under the slaughter of hens scheme, 44 were accepted. Under the egg industry scheme, initial applications were normally by telephone inquiry and were not logged, but a total of 1,434 applications were accepted as eligible. For both schemes, not all eligible applications were followed through.

Mr. Adley: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that, following the retraction of devastating and inaccurate remarks about egg producers, and contrary to the opinions expressed in some quarters, most of those affected were small egg farmers who had put a lifetime's effort into their businesses—and who, if the Government had not acted quickly, would have found their businesses destroyed? Will my hon. Friend accept my thanks, on behalf of my constituents, for the speed with which his Department acted?

Mr. MacGregor: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. We must recall the exceptional circumstances in which we took action, when egg sales dropped by 30 per cent. in one week and by 50 per cent. in another. My hon. Friend is right to say that many of the country's 45,000 flocks are owned by very small producers with modest incomes. They faced a serious situation, and the scheme that we introduced was well designed and achieved its objective of restoring stability to the market in a thoroughly cost-effective way.

Mr. Tony Banks: I am very reassured to know that the Prime Minister is now in charge of the campaign about poisoning the nation—for which she certainly seems to he eminently well qualified. Is it not time for an independent food and health executive, so that the public will know that it is hearing the truth? Frankly, nobody really believes the Government any more. I fully expect to read in the newspapers soon that another Minister recommends that we start boiling our Easter eggs.

Mr. MacGregor: I have no idea what that has to do with the question on the Order Paper, which concerns individual applications for compensation to egg producers. However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are dealing with complex matters. We make all the relevant information that is known to us available to the public, and we give advice whenever we think that that is necessary. It is important that, when comments are made, the public considers carefully what has been said. It is important also that advice is kept in perspective and does not get out of proportion.

Mr. Haselhurst: Is my right hon. Friend willing to consider compensation in cases where there is evidence that a farmer has suffered losses because of delays by departmental officials in handling samples that they have taken?

Mr. MacGregor: We have made clear what we are doing in respect of the compensation scheme, which was designed to put a floor in the market place. Payments made in response to applications went to egg packers, and in that way back to egg producers. I was not aware that applications were delayed. We certainly moved very speedily with the whole scheme.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister confirm that the compensation scheme is the subject of inquiries by the National Audit Office, which will report to the Public Accounts Committee? The Minister said that there has been no cover-up, but was there not a cover-up in respect of the names of the 21 protein processing plants that were responsible for the whole disaster? Why cannot the names of those 21 companies be given? If the Minister does not give that information to the House there will be a cover-up.

Mr. MacGregor: Not at all: there are perfectly good reasons for that and it has nothing to do with the egg compensation scheme. I am perfectly content for the egg compensation scheme to be thoroughly examined. The whole point and the key aspect of the scheme was the prices: 30p per dozen offered to take eggs off the market and the price set for culling young hens. In both cases the prices were low but they were there to give some stability and assistance to the market by lifting the prices from the rock bottom that they had reached. In both cases this objective was achieved. With spending of, it appears, just over £3 million on the two schemes, they have proved a very cost-effective measure.

Mr. Marland: Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that the totally unfounded remark by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) underlines the very scurrilous way in which the Opposition have been trying to flog this matter up? The general public is very concerned about infection in food. Does he agree with me that, for reasons of their own, the Opposition are seeking to create the maximum possible misunderstanding over the whole matter?

Mr. MacGregor: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is important that in all these matters we retain a sense of perspective. It is difficult always to get the information through directly to the public, but it is important for everyone to take a responsible attitude. Regarding the egg position, we have taken, over a period, some 17 measures to ensure that at the production end and right the way through the food chain everything possible is done to deal with the salmonella risk that we face. Indeed, ours are among the most comprehensive measures taken by any country in the world.

Dr. David Clark: Does the Minister accept that the only long-term solution to the problem of salmonella in eggs is the elimination of salmonella enteritidis from the poultry flock? Why will he not institute a phased inspection of the whole of the 45,000-strong poultry flock in this country,

culling where necessary, instead of carrying out his half-hearted scheme, which he admitted in Monday's papers will apply to only four flocks?

Mr. MacGregor: The hon. Gentleman has got it entirely wrong; let me take him through it. First, it is not possible to find, and no country in the world has yet found, a way to eradicate salmonella. Salmonella is in the environment; it is carried by wild birds and rodents, and this includes salmonella enteritidis. We are taking every possible step to minimise the risk of salmonella, but it would be irresponsible to claim that we can eradicate it.
Secondly, we are introducing, as one of the 17 measures, a requirement for bacteriological monitoring. It is also necessary for producers and their vets who find traces of salmonella to report it to the Ministry under the zoonoses order. From those sources we are getting a clearer and more accurate picture of the exact state of infection.
Regarding the four flocks, the hon. Gentleman really must get this properly in context. These are the four flocks on which we currently have restriction notices as a result of monitoring and reporting. I have no doubt that there will be more, but four flocks out of 45,000 helps to put in perspective the extent of salmonella.

Rabbits and Game

Mr. Colvin: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the draft proposal for a Council regulation (EEC) on animal health and public health problems affecting production and distribution in the territory of the Community, and importation from Third world countries of rabbit meat and game meat.

Mr. Donald Thompson: In its present form the draft proposal which the Commission is developing would require game meat to be inspected and processed under veterinary supervision in premises meeting the requirements for slaughterhouses engaged in intra-Community trade. There would be some provision for member states to permit exceptions for personal sales by the producers or sportsmen and for local trade in small quantities of small wild game.

Mr. Colvin: Next time that my hon. Friend is in Brussels, will he ask our Commissioners if they can stop dotty directives such as this one ever being drafted? Will he acknowledge that, if guidelines for game meat production are to be introduced, they should be based on traditional national practices and not subject to European harmonisation?

Mr. Thompson: I will have a word with our Commissioners and people in Brussels along the lines that my hon. Friend suggests, as I have done very time I have been to Brussels. We have achieved some important improvements in the draft directive, but I still see difficulties where it attempts to apply rules similar to those applied in the slaughterhouse, in various different circumstances, to game that is shot and dealt with by the traditional methods.

Mr. Home Robertson: What is the Minister doing to ensure that Britain is not opened up to serious animal diseases, including rabies, as a result of the internal European market from 1992? I hope that the Minister is


aware that the European Commission is seriously considering proposals to remove all national frontier controls and replace them with feeble, discretionary and voluntary controls for a group of diseases that specifically includes rabies. The Ministry of Agriculture's reputation for food and health protection in Britain is wearing a bit thin just now, so is it too much to hope that it will make a stand to protect Britain's shores against the introduction of rabies?

Mr. Thompson: I have seen the hon. Gentleman's written question this morning, which refers to a document that is about six months old. That is about the speed at which the Opposition keep up with these matters. The hon. Gentleman will get a full written reply. That document was circulated to all European countries suggesting a three-band scheme, which was initially our idea and which includes various diseases. We are determined that rabies will be in the first band of that scheme, and we intend to keep up all possible precautions to keep this country rabies-free.

Mr. Bill Walker: Is my hon. Friend aware that the proposals from Brussels are causing great concern in the Highlands of Scotland, where game is an essential part of the economy? Account must be taken of the fact that the traditional methods that have been in use in Scotland for centuries and have proved their worth should be continued. May I suggest that my hon. Friend, or anyone else who is looking for assistance and advice, will find no shortage of that in the other place?

Mr. Thompson: Yes, my hon. Friend is correct. I have already consulted his friends and our friends in the other place about the directive. We are concerned that our traditional methods of looking after game and of hunting game should be preserved. We are doing all that we can in Europe generally, as well as in the Parliament, to preserve our existing methods.

Mr. Cryer: Will the Minister assure the House that at no stage will the Government accept a rabies-free policy that is based on certificates of origin from exporting countries of the EEC which, as the Minister knows, the EEC has proposed? Will he assure the House that we will retain the right of control and inspection at our frontiers, whatever Delors and his cronies try to impose on us by 1992?

Mr. Thompson: I shall not chase the hare of Delors and the Opposition now. We are determined that our animal health status remains the highest in Europe, as it is now, including rabies control.

Countryside Commission

Mr. Riddick: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Countryside Commission; and what matters were discussed.

Mr. MacGregor: The Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Ryder) met the chairman of the Countryside Commission on 7 November when he discussed many issues of concern to the countryside. I frequently meet the chairman of the Countryside Commission, and I am always ready to discuss matters of mutual concern with him.

Mr. Riddick: Did my right hon. Friend discuss the environmentally sensitive areas scheme with the chairman and can he confirm that the Government are still committed to it and would be prepared to extend it to take in the village of Marsden in my constituency? The local residents have a major problem with sheep wandering into their gardens and homes. The scheme would give incentives farmers to take some of their sheep off the moors during the winter. Can my right hon. Friend make some hopeful noises on this matter?

Mr. MacGregor: My hon. Friend discussed the highly successful environmentally sensitive area scheme with the chairman of the Countryside Commission when he met him, although I do not believe that he considered the village to which my hon. Friend refers. We have moved very fast in creating ESAs in a considerable part of the most attractive areas of the country, and we must await the review before we decide whether to extend them further; and if so, how and to where.

Mr. Knapman: When my hon. Friend met the chairman of the Countryside Commission, did he discuss the farm woodland scheme, and can my right hon. Friend say what progress has been made on that?

Mr. MacGregor: Yes, he did and that, too, had a warm welcome. I am glad to tell my hon. Friend that in the first four months of the scheme up to January this year nearly 4,600 hectares have been included. That covers about 7 million trees to be planted after only four months' operation of the scheme, which shows that it has got off to a most encouraging start. Moreover, I am sure that the House will be pleased to know that it looks as though broadleaves will comprise about 75 per cent. of that 7 million.

Green Alliance

Mr. Summerson: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the Green Alliance; and what matters were discussed.

Mr. Ryder: I met leading representatives of the Green Alliance on 9 November 1988 and had a useful exchange of ideas on a wide variety of environmental questions. Subsequently, I invited Mr. Tom Burke, the director of the Green Alliance, to talk to a group of my constituents in Norfolk on 27 January 1989.

Mr. Summerson: When my hon. Friend next meets the Green Alliance, will he make sure that he mentions the new farm and conservation grant scheme, which is something to which I react with the greatest enthusiasm, and then tell the House of the enthusiasm with which the Green Alliance reacts to it?

Mr. Ryder: When I met the leading representatives of the Green Alliance on 9 November 1988 my right hon. Friend had not announced the new scheme. However, the next time that I meet the Green Alliance I shall certainly raise that matter and explain that we had a useful debate in the House early yesterday morning when the Opposition supported that new scheme brought before the House by a Conservative Government.

Mr. Skinner: Did the Minister mention to the Green Alliance that now that the Prime Minister has adopted the environment strategy, she has promised to get aboard


Greenpeace in a green anorak and sandals, and eating rice, but that while she may want to convey that impression, many Opposition Members will not buy that image?

Mr. Ryder: I find that so-called question of no interest at all.

Mr. Alexander: Was my hon. Friend able to elicit from his meeting the fact that the interests of the producers can easily be reconciled with those of the environmentalists?

Mr. Ryder: I discussed that with the Green Alliance on 9 November and subsequently with its director in January. It recognises, as do the Government, that those two interests are working closely together.

Dr. Godman: When the Minister met members of the Green Alliance, did they raise with him the issue of radioactive hot spots recently revealed in Cumbria and Scotland by aerial surveys conducted by his Ministry and scientists from the radiation centre at East Kilbride in Scotland? Surely, the time has now arrived for the Minister, along with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Northern Ireland, to commission a full aerial survey of radioactivity levels throughout the United Kingdom.

Mr. Ryder: I did not discuss that matter with the Green Alliance. It does not share the Opposition's view about the conspiracy theory of history. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no question but that all the material that we have on that matter is published and that all safety margins are properly explained to the public.

Farming Diversification

Mr. David Nicholson: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what he is doing to help farmers address the planning implications of diversification projects.

Mr. MacGregor: Last month we published a guide written especially for farmers, entitled "Planning Permission and the Farmer". This was prepared jointly by my Ministry, the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office. This guide explains how the planning system works; describes how to find out whether or not a project is likely to need planning permission; and gives advice on how to present a case to planning authorities. I hope that it will be helpful to farmers.

Mr. Nicholson: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that farmers seeking to establish farm shops and other businesses would benefit if clearer and more consistent guidance were available to planning authorities?
What advice does my right hon. Friend have for Mr. Tom Morris of East Lydeard farm in my constituency, who has established a cricket pitch and a pick-your-ownstrawberries patch on his land—which will benefit families visiting the farm—but who is now facing difficulty from the county surveyor over signposting his new business?

Mr. MacGregor: I assure my hon. Friend that I am well aware that planning issues are becoming a major concern in connection with farm diversification. That is why I, my hon. Friends and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment have not only given guidance to

planning authorities to take into account the new situation in agriculture and the need to diversify, but are going round the country urging them to do so.
I recommend the guide to farmers—especially Mr. Morris—because I believe that they will find that it contains a great deal of helpful advice about how to deal with the planning system, very often for the first time. With regard to the signposting, I would ask my hon. Friend to draw Mr. Morris's attention to annex D of this document.

Mr. Boswell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the attitudes of planning authorities vary in different parts of the country? Will he and his colleagues do their best to ensure that those who are now acting as nimbys join the others that take a more positive attitude to rural diversification and similar developments?

Mr. MacGregor: I agree with my hon. Friend and I would wish to do so. It is fair to say, however, that many planning authorities are taking a much more constructive approach than they perhaps did in the past. They recognise that—wherever the planning and environmental considerations can be met—it is highly desirable that diversification takes place in the interests of rural employment and prosperity.

EC Food (Distribution)

Mr. Allen: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will re-examine the arrangements for distribution of surplus European Economic Community food to pensioners and others.

Mr. Ryder: The current scheme for the distribution of surplus European Economic Community food was introduced in 1988 and is to be reviewed after two years' operation. Charitable and non-profit-making organisations were invited to participate on this basis, and they will be consulted shortly about detailed arrangements for the 1989 distribution.

Mr. Allen: Is the Minister aware of the antagonism among those pensioners who are not entitled to receive any of the surplus butter, beef or whatever? Will he ensure that any future scheme is far fairer to all pensioners so that that sort of local problem does not arise? After all, £112 million was spent on surplus food in the redistribution. Will the hon. Gentleman ensure that either there is no problem, because there is no redistribution, or, if there must be redistribution, it is carried out fairly?

Mr. Ryder: About 6 million people are entitled to receive the food under this scheme and they fall mainly into three categories. They are those receiving family credit or income support, those of no fixed abode, and those living in welfare hostels. Many pensioners already fall into those three categories.

Mr. Kilfedder: Is the Minister aware that a vast number of deserving and needy pensioners in my constituency were denied the opportunity to benefit from the surplus EEC food because of the nonsensical distribution arrangements? I am sure that the Minister will ensure that this year's arrangements are fair and that pensioners will get a fair deal.

Mr. Ryder: I have already explained to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) that many


pensioners already fall into the three categories which I mentioned. In all, 6 million people are entitled to receive the food, many of whom are pensioners.

Mr. McGrady: Will the Minister take into account the fact that the distribution of surplus EEC foodstuffs in Northern Ireland was a complete disaster? Will the Minister investigate the allegations that certain bodies—even those with political connotations—were selling that food to people who were not within the categories which the Minister mentioned?

Mr. Ryder: If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence about the abuse of this system, I hope that he will present it to Ministers as soon as possible.

Women's Farming Union

Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the Women's Farming Union; and what matters they discussed.

Mr. Donald Thompson: My right hon. Friend met the chairman of the Women's Farming Union most recently at its annual general meeting on 23 November 1988, and a range of issues were discussed, including the impact of the single European market.

Mr. Bruce: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. In his discussions, did my right hon. Friend the Minister recognise the excellent role played by the Women's Farming Union in helping to diversify farmers' products and in particular introducing regional marketing for regional products and developing speciality food? Will my right hon. Friend the Minister be developing those points with the Women's Farming Union?

Mr. Thompson: I have considered that, and my right hon. Friend the Minister has also discussed the matter with the Women's Farming Union. We congratulate the union on the Fresh Taste of Britain competition which will be a schools competition and will be directed at young consumers now and in the future. That initiative will operate alongside Food from Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Dunn: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today, including one with the President of Bangladesh.

Mr. Dunn: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the total hostility and opposition of the people of Dartford to British Rail's proposal to build a high speed rail link through north-west Kent concentrating in particular on routes 1 and 2? In case Parliament should give British Rail its private Bill, will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity today to reaffirm the pledges already given by

Transport Ministers that the Bill will have significant environmental protection and generous compensation for the people who will be affected by the route?

The Prime Minister: I am very well aware that people in Kent are deeply concerned to know what proposal will come forward about extra rail capacity. There is general agreement that there must be increased rail capacity for the people of Kent. Both British Rail and the Government are well aware that a single firm proposal must be brought forward soon. I hope that that will ease the position. I agree that the proposal must take full account of environmental factors and be accompanied by an announcement of proper compensation arrangements.

Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister tell us how her plans to reach zero inflation are getting along?

The Prime Minister: They are proceeding—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister has only managed one sentence.

The Prime Minister: —by methods which the right hon. Gentleman opposes. I note that the best performance of the Labour Government was 7·4 per cent. inflation, which was a low level according to their standards, which they reached for only one month. That must be compared with our best performance so far of 2·4 per cent. We have already had inflation at 3 per cent. or below for six months. The chances of our getting down to zero are good.

Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister knows that under this Government there has been no oil price hike, no major rise in commodity prices—[Interruption.] So can the Prime Minister tell us why it is that under her Government the rate of inflation is now higher and rising faster in Britain than in any comparable industrialised country?

The Prime Minister: Under this Government there is no incomes and prices policy to keep incomes down and put prices up, as happened under the Labour Government. There have been far fewer strikes, a far better standard of living, far better manufacturing output and far better profitability—better all round.

Mr. Lawrence: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the blistering attack yesterday by the Lord Chief Justice of England on the Government's Green Papers for law reform? Is she further aware that the result of those Green Papers will be the virtual abolition of the independent Bar, which will drive up legal costs—[Interruption.] The Green Papers will restrict the availability of lawyers, particularly in country areas, and will reduce the quality of services. Is my right hon. Friend further aware that those recommendations are directly contrary to the proposals of the Benson Royal Commission in 1979, which the Government accepted in 1983—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman make it brief?

Mr. Lawrence: What has happened to cause the Government to stand on their head? [Interruption.]

The Prime Minister: I think that I heard half that question. I must point out to my hon. and learned Friend that any proposal, or set of proposals, put forward by our most distinguished Lord Chancellor is worthy of serious consideration and merits serious debate. I know that my


hon. and learned Friend has strong views, and I think that strong views will also be expressed by those who oppose his point of view when we debate this very important subject.

Mr. Leighton: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Leighton: How many Cabinet Ministers has the right hon. Lady sacked since she became Prime Minister? Was there any pattern in their behaviour that might enable us to forecast who will be next?

The Prime Minister: Really. How very ungentlemanly of the hon. Gentleman. Cabinet Ministers resign from time to time.

Mr. John Marshall: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that to suggest that we should maintain the independent deterrent, but then to say that there are no circumstances in which it would be used, undermines its credibility? Does she agree that the authors of the proposal are interested not in the peace of the world but in creating an uneasy peace within their own party?

The Prime Minister: Yes, I agree fully with my hon. Friend. Any such suggestion betrays a total lack of understanding of nuclear deterrence, which has been the basis of NATO strategy and has kept the peace for 40 years. The proposal betrays a fundamental weakness in defence policy. This Government will maintain our defences to ensure that the defence of freedom is strong.

Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Banks: May I congratulate the Prime Minister on the excellent news that she is soon to become a grandmother?

Dame Peggy Fenner: That is more than the hon. Gentleman will ever manage.

Mr. Banks: Everything is possible in this life. When her hard-working son once more graces these shores with a shiny new—

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not matters for the Prime Minister.

Mr. Banks: Her son must be a matter for the Prime Minister.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must ask a parliamentary and not a family question.

Mr. Banks: When her son returns to these shores—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Questions to the Prime Minister must relate to her parliamentary responsibilities.

Mr. Churchill: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Churchill: Now that the last Soviet soldier has left Afghanistan, will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the courage and sacrifice of the Afghan people over more than nine years of occupation? Will she also express our appreciation to Pesident Gorbachev for the new-found realism in Soviet foreign policy? Does that not make possible the opening of a new and more productive chapter in the relationship between our two countries?

The Prime Minister: yes, I agree with my hon. Friend that it has been the superb courage and determination of the resistance which have meant that the occupying forces have now left Afghanistan. That is good for Afghanistan and good news for the world as a whole. We should also pay tribute to the role of Pakistan in receiving many refugees over the years and in looking after them so unselfishly. I shall certainly convey our appreciation to Mr. Gorbachev, when he comes in April. This is a new chapter and indicates a new realism. We hope that it can be used also to solve other regional problems.

Dr. Owen: As less than half of Conservative voters think that the National Health Service is safe in the hands of this Government and one third of them think that it is unsafe, is it not time that the Government withdrew the proposals to commercialise the Health Service, to introduce an open, not an internal, market and to create a two-tier Health Service?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that there are no proposals to privatise the National Health Service; nor could there be any such proposals because one does not pay for the service at the point of use; nor should one. The National Health Service is a great deal safer in the hands of a Conservative Government than it ever was in the right hon. Gentleman's hands when he was Minister of State for Health and than it ever was in Labour hands, when they spent only a fraction on the Health Service of what the British taxpayer is spending now.

Mr. Couchman: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Couchman: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that when she met the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr. Arens, she made it clear that there can be no peaceful settlement to the middle eastern conflict without acceptance of the principle of territory for peace?

The Prime Minister: Yes, we had a very fruitful discussion yesterday with the Israeli Foreign Minister and we made it absolutely clear that when the Arab world is negotiating, it will be territory in return for peace. That is, of course, the basis of United Nations resolution 242, which Israel accepts.

Mr. Ashley: I welcome the Prime Minister's condemnation of the sale of kidneys, but can she tell the House which she finds more abhorrent—the sale of those organs or the


debt and poverty that induce people to sell them? Now that the British people have begun to sell organs, can the Prime Minister tell the House what she feels about the fact that more than 3 million people in Britain are in debt and more than 6 million people are living in poverty—as I hope she acknowledges? That record is the shameful and shabby result of her policies.

The Prime Minister: I made my views known on the sale of kidneys. I think that it is utterly abhorrent and even though people are poor, it does no mean that they should forfeit all the respect to which they are entitled. The right hon. Gentleman referred to poverty. Poverty, on his definition, is constantly upgraded, as far as income is concerned. In fact, there are fewer pensioners now in the bottom one fifth of income than there were under the Government that he supported.

Mr. John Greenway: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend agree that today's confirmation that unemployment has fallen below 2 million is a significant landmark in the Government's campaign to create more jobs? Is it not also significant that unemployment is falling throughout the country and that the number of job vacancies, including in the north of England, is rising?

The Prime Minister: Yes. Today's news that unemployment has fallen—seasonally adjusted—to below 2 million was very good news. Not only has unemployment fallen, but there are now more people in employment in this country than at any time ever, and that, too, is excellent news. There has been a particularly good record since the last election. During the last election

campaign the Labour party promised that it would create 1 million jobs in two years. They would have done that by methods that would have undermined the economy, whereas we have created very nearly 1 million new jobs in under two years by methods which have reinforced our prosperity.

Mr. Nellist: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 16 February.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend—[Interruption.]—or the hon. Gentleman or hon. Lady, whichever it is, to the answer that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Nellist: During the Prime Minister's discussions with the Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Ahrens, has she raised with him the fact that in four days last month in the occupied territories eight children, one as young as 11, were killed by rubber or plastic-coated steel bullets—sorne shot at close range in the head or chest? How are the Government of Israel to be censured, other than by sharp, economic direct action—if not by the Government, by the workers of this country?

The Prime Minister: We have made our views about some of the events in the West Bank very clear to Israel. The hon. Gentleman points out—it underlies his remarks—that there is a need to get negotiations going and that they need to be properly prepared on the basis of United Nations resolution 242, which deals with territory for peace. I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of people in Israel seek a maintained peace with security behind their own border. That is also the purpose and wish of the Arabs in the region.

Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take points of order after business questions.

Business of the House

Mr. Frank Dobson: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 20 FEBRUARY—Remaining stages of the Transport (Scotland) Bill.
TUESDAY 21 FEBRUARY—Opposition Day (5th Allotted Day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Government's failure to give proper care to the safety of food and water".
Motion on the Rate Limitation (Councils in England) (Prescribed Maximum) (Rates) Order.
WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY—Remaining stages of the
Official Secrets Bill.
Motion on the London Regional Transport (Levy) Order.
THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY—Debate on a motion to take note of the White Paper on developments in the European Community January to June 1988 (Cm. 467).
Motion to take note of EC documents relating to the prevention and reduction of air pollution from municipal waste incineration plants. Details will be given in the Official Report.
FRIDAY 24 FEBRUARY—Private Members' Bills.
MONDAY 27 FEBRUARY—Debate on a motion to take note of proposals for agricultural prices for 1989–90 and related issues. Details of the EC documents concerned and of those relevant to the debate will be given in the Official Report.
[Thursday 23 February
Relevant European Community Document:


51421/88
Air pollution—municipal waste incineration plants


Relevant Report of European Legislation Committee:
HC 43-xxiv (1987–88), para 1


Monday 27 February



 (a) COM(89)40
Agricultural price proposals 1989–90


(b) 8960/88
Review of the sheepmeat and goatmeat regime


(c) 10083/88
New Zealand lamb


(d) 9629/88
Cereals: incorporation in animal feeding-stuffs


(e) 8502/88
Court of Auditors' Special Report: Management and control of public storage


(f) 8951/88
Pigmeat market


(g) 9658/88
Cereals: co-responsibility levy


(h) 9275/88
Aid for agricultural conversion


Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee:
(a) HC 15-xi (1988–89), para 3
(b) HC 15-ii (1988–89), para 3
(c) HC 15-v (1988–89), para 1
(d) HC 15-v (1988–89), para 3
(e) HC 15-i (1988–89), para 3
(f) HC 15-i (1988–89), para 13
(g) HC 15-v (1988–89), para 8
(h) HC 15-v (1988–89), para 7.]

Mr. Dobson: I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.
Over the past few days, the Prime Minister's publicity machine has briefed the news media to the effect that she is most concerned about her Government's failure to get their act together to improve the safety of everyday foods. For instance, we learn that she is so unsatisfied with what the various Ministers are doing that she has set up a special Cabinet Committee, under her chairmanship, to try to sort things out. As the subject is so important, why is it that the right hon. Lady does not intend to be here to reply to the debate on the topic next Tuesday? Perhaps she has some more pressing engagement on that day. If so, will the Leader of the House bear in mind the fact that we would be quite willing to shift the Opposition day to a day convenient to the Prime Minister so that she can answer to the House on this important topic?
While on the subject of answering on important topics, I remind the Leader of the House that the Chancellor of the Exchequer leaked the likely inflation rate in a speech at the weekend and will be publishing it formally tomorrow. Could he split the difference and make a statement to the House today, giving the facts?
When may we expect the debate on student loans which the right hon. Gentleman promised in January? When can we expect the promised debate on the Fennell report on the King's Cross fire? Can he confirm that the debate on housing that was postponed because of the debate on the by-election writs will take place shortly? Can he confirm also that we shall shortly have an opportunity to debate the Joint Committee's report on the future of private Bill procedure? Finally, can he tell us what stage has been reached in drafting legislation to outlaw the buying and selling of kidneys in private hospitals?

Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman asked seven questions about the business for next week. The first concerned Tuesday's debate on the Opposition motion on food and water. On the Government side, the debate will be handled by the Secretary of State for Health and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who are more than competent to deal with any matters that the Opposition may seek to raise.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor will not be making a statement. The official retail prices index figures will be issued in the normal way.
On the question of student loans, I recognise the need for a debate, but I am not in a position to announce when it will take place. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman details.
I have already told the hon. Member the degree of importance we attach to the Fennell report. I agree that it would be appropriate to have a debate, but it would be best to leave the precise timing for discussion through the usual channels.
I recognise that the House missed an opportunity for a debate on housing. This is an important subject, and the Government have a very good story to tell. I note the hon. Gentleman's request, and I will certainly arrange for further discussions through the usual channels.
With regard to the Joint Select Committee on Private Bill Procedure, I recognise that there is keen interest in having a debate on its report. This is a major report, and we are currently studying the recommendations in detail. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman precisely when the debate will take place, but it will not be long delayed.
On the question of kidneys, I have nothing to add to what I have said previously. The matter is being considered by the Government, and I will arrange for an announcement to be made as soon as possible.

Mr. David Steel: The Leader of the House will be aware that hon. Members were lobbied earlier this week by relatives of those killed in the Piper Alpha disaster. Although there cannot he a debate next week, will the Leader of the House ensure that a statement is made from the Dispatch Box justifying the mean and callous decision to leave the wreckage on the seabed?

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise the concern about this matter. Yesterday my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Energy and the Minister of State for Energy met representatives of the bereaved and survivors to hear their concerns personally, and I do not think that I can add anything at this stage.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: My right hon. Friend's announcement about next Thursday's business is most welcome, but is he satisfied that that there is adequate scrutiny of European Commission proposals? Does he agree that the Government's negotiating position would be greatly strengthened if this House were regularly able to debate those proposals before the Government arrived at their final negotiating position?

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise that on the scrutiny, in this House of European documents, things are not as good as they should be. That is not necessarily totally the fault of our procedures. There have been difficulties in bringing matters forward at the right time. I have had discussions with the Chairman and members of the Select Committee on European Legislation—it was a very helpful meeting—and I am having meetings with other Members of the House. I hope that, by consideration of these things, we shall be able to improve the situation for the future. However, I recognise the force of the hon. Gentleman's concern.

Mr. Chris Smith: The Leader of the House will be aware of the deep concern of millions of people about the personal safety of my constituent, Mr. Salman Rushdie, and their horror at the threats that have been made on his life and the lives of others. Will the Leader of the House find time for a statement to be made so that we may be assured that everything possible is being done to secure Mr. Rushdie's safety and that we may know what approaches are being made to the leaders of Iran to lift the shadow that hangs over Mr. Rushdie? The Government should state clearly that the freedom to write and the freedom to speak peacefully must be upheld in a democratic society.

Mr. Wakeham: The Government believe that the declaration is totally unacceptable and we have sought urgent clarification from the Iranian authorities. Mr. Rushdie has been given personal protection. The police also have taken steps to protect the premises of the publishers and to advise members of the company on their own security. I recognise the strong feelings, but I am not convinced that ventilating them in a debate or through a statement next week would be the best way of proceeding. I shall certainly refer the hon. Gentleman's concern to my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary.

Mr. Richard Holt: I am sure that my right hon. Friend recognised at the time the injustice which might be caused because of the insolvency legislation whereby criminals like Mr. Justin Frewin, who has swindled thousands of people, can be discharged from bankruptcy. Will my right hon. Friend find a small amount of parliamentary time to enable the loophole to be closed so that those who defraud others of trust money which cannot be touched until the bankruptcy is cleared cannot do that in perpetuity?

Mr. Wakeham: I do not have before me the facts of the case to which my hon. Friend has referred, but I recognise his concern. I will discuss the matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and perhaps write to my hon. Friend.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will the Leader of the House read early-day motion 271 which calls for a code of conduct for private hospitals?
[That this House, noting the Government's insistence on using private hospitals for National Health Service patients, calls for the immediate imposition of a system of medical audit on all private hospitals; further demands that the twice-yearly inspections of such hospitals should be recorded centrally by the Department of Health, with copies of any adverse comments; particularly insists that any failure to comply with the full statutory obligations should merit immediate action by the Secretary of State; and, until such time as an effective regulatory Code of Conduct is in place, calls upon the Secretary of State for Health to desist from allowing National Health Service patients to be treated outside the National Health Service.]
A code of conduct is necessary in view of some of the recent incidents involving the sale of organs. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Ministry to make a statement in the House about how he intends to ensure that National Health Service patients who are put into private institutions, whether or not they want that, will be protected by a reasonable standard of medical care?

Mr. Wakeham: I believe that the vast majority of private hospitals conduct themselves properly and efficiently. The present concerns are being considered urgently by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. It is known that the Government are considering how best to proceed. When they have made the decision, that will be the time to consider whether a statement is appropriate.

Mr. Nicholas Baker: The Government published in January a White Paper on the future of development plans. Unfortunately, we lost the opportunity to debate it earlier this week. Given that the Government intend to legislate on the matter later this year, will my right hon. Friend find time at an early date for a debate on this important subject?

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise my hon. Friend's concern. I shall see what I can do, but I cannot make a firm promise.

Mr. Michael Foot: If, as appears from the right hon. Gentleman's statement a few moments ago, the Prime Minister is refusing to speak in the debate next Tuesday, can he tell us who in the Government is responsible for co-ordinating the policies of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Health?

Mr. Wakeham: Basically the same system of Cabinet government operates under this Government as operated under the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a distinguished member, although I suspect that it operates better now than it did in his time. The debate on the subject put down by the Opposition will be answered appropriately by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Health and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. No doubt it will be a good and interesting debate.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some 40 residents of Caldy Island in Pembrokeshire have discovered that they are not eligible to vote in parliamentary or European elections due to a confusion caused by the Home Office and the Welsh Office, and that primary legislation in the form of an Act will be required to restore their right to vote? Will my right hon. Friend assure me that my constituents will get their vote back in time for the European elections in June?

Mr. Wakeham: I am certainly aware of the matter because I have a letter on my desk from my hon. Friend and I am busy finding the appropriate answer to give him. I refer him and the House to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office. At this stage I can add nothing more to that, but I know that my hon. Friend wants me to look again at the matter, and I promise him that I shall do so.

Rev. Martin Smyth: Will the Leader of the House accept my plea in support of the question of the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Etterick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) requesting a statement in the House so that we can discuss some of the issues affecting the relatives of those involved in the tragic Piper Alpha disaster? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the speculation in the press, particularly today, about the announcement in London next week of an inter-parliamentary body that has been identified with the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees? Have I missed something? Do those committees contain representatives of foreign Parliaments? How does he think that such a body can deal with the future of Northern Ireland when that depends on the will of the people of Northern Ireland?

Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman asks his questions with an innocence which is somewhat uncharacteristic. I think he knows perfectly well that discussions are taking place, but the speculations in the press are rather wide of those discussions which aim to discover whether there are ways of achieving some degree of co-operation and discussion among parliamentarians, but it would not be anything in the nature of a Select Committee or a Grand Committee of the House.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the details surrounding Derbyshire's appointment of Mr. Reg Race as its chief executive, his removal from office within nine months and the lack of information being given to elected members of the severance pay awarded to Mr. Race?

Mr. Wakeham: That sounds like a fascinating subject, and I wish that I could find the opportunity for such a debate in the near future. Perhaps my hon. Friend would like to try his luck in an Adjournment debate on the subject.

Mr. Jack Ashley: Will the Leader of the House give us his views on the prospects for a debate on an issue affecting democratic debate in the House? Should a Member of the House, paid by outside interests, be allowed to block a Bill which was designed to help people with a disability because that Bill was unwelcome to the people outside the House who pay him? Is it right and proper that that should be allowed?

Mr. Wakeham: If the right hon. Gentleman does not believe that the procedures of the House are right, his best course of action is to refer the matter to the Select Committee on Procedure or the Select Committee on Members' Interests. He should express his concerns to them rather than to membercontribution.

Sir Anthony Grant: Has my right hon. Friend noted that early-day motion 250 still lies on the Table, that it has now been signed by 209 hon. Members on both sides of the House, but that, despite meetings with Ministers, the matter remains unsatisfactory and unresolved?
[That this House notes the recommendation of the Trade and Industry Committee that petrol prices should continue to be displayed in gallon and well as litre term on boards visible from the roadside; notes that the Price Marking (Petrol) (Amendment) Order 1988 will remove this requirement with effect from 23rd January; and calls for a debate on the Order.]
In those circumstances, would it not be a good idea to have a debate?

Mr. Wakeham: I said to my hon. Friend two or three weeks ago and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mr. Warren) that my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye, as Chairman of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, had a useful meeting with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on this matter. My right hon. Friend was considering the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye put to him. That is as far as I can take the matter at the moment, but I recognise my hon. Friend's concern.

Mr. Doug Hoyle: Has the Leader of the House had an opportunity to see early-day motion 416, signed by 116 hon. Members?
[That this House condemns the dumping of hospital incinerator waste, containing refuse from patients suffering from Hepatitis B', AIDS, toxic drugs, amputated limbs and radioactive isotopes at a landfilled site Rixton, Warrington, instead of transporting this to a licensed incinerator; and calls upon the Government to urgently introduce tougher legislation to stop pirates making a quick buck at the expense of the health and safety of the people of Rixton.]
Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that it is only the tip of the iceberg, as there is a shortage of incinerators? Will he make time for a debate? The health and safety of people not only in Rixton but in other parts of the country are being put at risk by people who want to make a quick buck and are cowboys in the waste disposal industry.

Mr. Wakeham: The deposit of hospital waste at the site in Cheshire appears to have been in contravention of Colliers Industrial Waste Ltd's disposal licence, and Cheshire county council has instigated legal proceedings. Proposed changes to legislation announced last June will


prevent the recurrence of such an incident. Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution has been asked to investigate the incident. That is a practical and sensible way to proceed.

Mr. Michael Latham: Is my right hon. Friend happy with the system by which the House debates foreign affairs only about once or twice a year on a motion for the Adjournment, and most of the time is taken up by half-hour rambles by Privy Councillors and former Ministers? Is it not about time that we had more frequent debates, if necessary half-day debates, and preferably on specific aspects?

Mr. Wakeham: I have had discussions and corespondence with my hon. Friend, with my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Commit tee on Foreign Affairs, and others.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: And others.

Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman wants to be very careful. He will be in trouble with his mother again.
I hope that we can improve matters. It is not entirely a matter for the Government. Some contributions seemed to be a bit on the long side, but I recognise the force of what my hon. Friend says and I will see what we can do about it.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith)? Even if he cannot agree at this stage to a statement or debate on a specific book which has been published and is causing great trouble, may we have a debate on the publication of books? John Bunyan spent many years in prison because of the "Pilgrim's Progress". Because of the "Age of Reason" and "the Rights of Man", Thomas Paine was persecuted. Milton had to write "Areopagitica" because of Cromwell. Should we not have a debate on the general principle? There is strong feeling on both sides of the House that this is a fundamental matter of importance, based upon the history of our country.

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise the strength of what the hon. Gentleman has said. I recognise also his concern. It is a fundamental and important matter. My point to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) was that I am not sure, in the present rather delicate circumstances, whether a debate in the House would help to deal with some serious problems concerning the life and death of several people. I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but I cannot promise a debate in the near future.

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Will my right hon. Friend win concordant affability and influence with the Opposition and split Tuesday's debate into two parts? The first half may be concerned with the Opposition's pretence that the Government have mishandled the concept of eating dairy foods which are perfectly safe. The second half could be on haggis, whisky and broth, which are infinitely more likely to be bug-bearing but are totally safe, as are all dairy products. The whole thing is bunkum.

Mr. Wakeham: It will not require any efforts on my part to find some inconsistencies in the arguments that are presented on Tuesday, but we will await the debate with great interest.

Mr. Alex Salmond: Has the Leader of the House had time to consider the contents of early-day motion 427 which concerns the financial condition of the fishing industry and comments made last Sunday on BBC television by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson)?
[That this House notes the comments concerning the financial difficulties of the sea fish industry by the Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the hon. Member for Calder Valley, on the BBC Money Programme on 12 February that "I can't run another man's business nor do I intend that a man who can't run his business should be laid at the door of this Government"; calls on the Government to recognise that individual .fishermen, currently caught in a cost revenue squeeze between high interest rates and limited catching opportunities, are subject to Government and European policies over which they have no control; demands that the hon. Member for Calder Valley publicly withdraw his insensitive and offensive remark that fishermen are not able to run their businesses; and further calls on the Government to introduce a coherent policy of fisheries control which will relate catching capacity to available stocks through a range of measures including a planned decommissioning scheme, action at European level on discards and industrial fishing, effective enforcement of mesh size changes, monitoring of the impact of third country imports on domestic price levels, the introduction of special economic assistance for coastal areas dependent on the fishing industry and an end to the excessive reliance on sharp fluctuations in Total Allowable Catches as the only instrument of fisheries management.]
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that those comments have caused enormous concern in the industry because he appeared to set the Government's face against a number of policy options, including a decommissioning scheme? Does he agree that that reinforces the case for an early and urgent debate on the financial condition facing fishermen?

Mr. Wakeham: Fisheries Ministers recognise the problems caused to some fishermen by the reduced 1989 quotas for North Sea haddock and cod. These reductions were needed in the long-term interests of the fishermen. Action must be taken to curb the growth of our fleet, and discussions about improved conservation measures are in train. We have had debates on fishing in the not-too-distant past. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman and his constituents would like more frequent debates on the subject. I cannot promise a debate, but I recognise that it is an important subject.

Mr. John Bowis: My right hon. Friend will be aware that one of the recommendations of the Fennell report is embodied in early-day motion 256 on public safety information, which has now been signed by 260 right hon. and hon. Members of all parties and which will arise on the 24th of this month in a private Member's Bill. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will give a fair wind to this literally life-saving measure?
[That this House welcomes the opportunity to consider the Public Safety Information Bill, which comes up for its Second Reading on 24th February, and joins with the all-party group of honourable Members as well as such organisations as the British Safety Council, the Consumers' Association and the Scottish Consumers' Council, and also such local authorities as Slough Borough Council, Middlesbrough Borough Council, Harrogate District Council, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, Wansbeck District Council and Bedfordshire County


Council, in supporting the Bill; and further calls upon the Government to support the Bill and assist it in its passage through the House, thus ensuring that the Bill becomes law.]

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise my hon. Friend's concern and interest in this matter and his authority to speak, coming from his constituency. I am of course aware that the hon. Member for Gateshead, East (Ms. Quin) has introduced a private Member's Bill on public safety information. The Government have a draft of the Bill and are currently studying its provisions. I cannot take the matter further than that.

Mrs. Ann Clwyd: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think again about the reply he gave to my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House, when he requested a debate on the report of the Joint Committee on the reform of the private Bill procedure?
I ask him to do that for two reasons. First, the delay in considering and implementing the recommendations of that report means that we are costing the taxpayers enormous sums in lost money, as one of the main recommendations was that the promoters of private Bills in this House should pay hundreds of thousands of pounds more than the peanuts that they are paying at present.
Secondly, planning permission is still being given through the back door of this House on issues which more rightly should be the subject of public inquiries. I am wondering whether the Government's delay in arranging a debate on the report is due to the fact that they are trying to assist some promoters in getting Bills in through the back door instead of going through the proper planning procedures.

Mr. Wakeham: I refute entirely what the hon. Lady says. This is a complicated matter and it is a major report. It has taken a long time to prepare and the Government would do it less than justice if they did not study the report carefully, as we promised to do. I have said that we shall have a debate, and that will take place as soon as possible. I would not accept for a moment any of the hon. Lady's accusations.

Mr. Ian Bruce: When will we have a debate on defence matters? I appreciate that there are regular defence debates, but they tend to be bunched together. Perhaps the House would like to discuss, in particular, the new changes to allowances and pay—and I understand that at 4 o'clock this afternoon there will be an announcement on pay and allowances. Such a debate would be a wonderful opportunity for Conservative Members to be persuaded by Opposition Members of their new defence policy, which we understand is under review just now.

Mr. Wakeham: There are expressions with shades of significance in answers which Leaders of the House give. My answer to my hon. Friend is that it will be my intention to arrange debates on the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force in the relatively near future, so my hon. Friend will not have long to wait.

Mr. Greville Janner: May we have an early debate on the number of people—mainly children and the elderly—who are killed on the roads at places where pedestrian crossings have been approved but not installed? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in my

constituency last week, eight-year-old Kerry Allen was killed at precisely the spot on a road in New Parks estate that is to be the location of a crossing approved by Leicestershire county council, but which it says that it does not have the money to install? How many more children will be needlessly killed on our roads because county councils either do not have enough money to install crossings, or say that they do not have enough money?

Mr. Wakeham: The hon. and learned Gentleman raised this question during Transport Question Time earlier this week. I can add nothing to what was said then by my hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic, but I recognise the hon. and learned Gentleman's concern and I shall have a word with my hon. Friend.

Mr. Tim Smith: I reinforce what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker) about the need for a debate on the White Paper concerning the future of development plans. Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is no more important an issue in my constituency than planning and the protection of the green belt? If we are to have a planning Bill in the next Session, would it not make sense to have a debate between now and the end of July?

Mr. Wakeham: I agree with my hon. Friend that it would make an excellent subject for debate, and I know that good speeches would be made about that important issue. I cannot be more forthcoming than I was to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker).

Mr. David Winnick: Arising from replies given to my hon. Friends, will the Government make it clear that all religions must be respected—the Moslem no less than any other—and that we recognise the offence that has undoubtedly been caused to many Moslems in this country and abroad? However, it is also necessary to emphasise that the rule of law applies in this country, unlike in Iran, and that incitement to violence is a criminal offence here. As to the death threat from Iran, is it not intolerable that such a threat should be made by a country with which we have diplomatic relations? Will the Government make it perfectly clear that British people will not stand for that kind of threat or blackmail? We learned 50 years ago this year that there cannot be appeasement of dictators.

Mr. Wakeham: I fully recognise the hon. Gentleman's strong feelings. Given the situation that we are in, I chose my words carefully. I do not think that I ought to add anything to my previous remarks.

Mr. Neil Hamilton: At the risk of sounding mildly unfashionable, I urge my right hon. Friend to exercise considerable caution before rushing to introduce legislation to ban the sale of human organs. Many people feel that if that practice increases the supply of organs, and has the effect of saving life and easing discomfort, it ought not to be banned. Does my right hon. Friend share my bewilderment that Opposition Members who are keen to allow women the right to choose to kill their unborn children seem to become very indignant when other parts of their body are up for choice?

Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend makes his point, as he usually does, in a clear way. As to the sale of organs and kidneys, the Government have made known their


abhorrence of the particularly repugnant trade that exists. Nothing that my hon. Friend has said persuades me to think differently.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I welcome the interest of the Leader of the House in my personal affairs. I wish to ask him about the personal affairs of six Conservative Members. Will he say whether a list of those six hon. Members was available to him when he was in the Whips' Office? Is a similar list available to the Patronage Secretary now?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman raised with me points of order on that subject. I remind him that we are dealing with business questions.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: My question relates to the business of the House, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Then the hon. Gentleman had better ask for a debate.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: I asked the Leader of the House whether he had a list of the six Conservative Members in question when he was Chief Whip, and whether there was a similar list in the office of the present Chief Whip? May we have a straight answer?

Mr. Wakeham: I do not want to entice the hon. Gentleman into any further trouble, either with you, Mr. Speaker, or with his mother. I have nothing to add to my previous answer, because I do not comment on security matters.

Mr. Greg Knight: Is my hon. Friend aware of the growing anger and concern in Derbyshire that ratepayers have suffered a 168 per cent. rate increase since 1982, and that Derbyshire is now the highest rated shire county? May we have an early debate on remaining order No. 36, standing on the Order Paper in my name? If my right hon. Friend agrees to such a debate, may we also learn what has been the cost to the citizens of Derbyshire of the employment for nine months of Reg Race as chief executive?

Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend adds his significant voice to the calls made to me earlier in business questions. I wish that I could meet his request. I am afraid that I cannot do so, but no doubt my hon. Friend will find another way of ventilating the points that he wishes to make.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: It was prescient of you, Mr. Speaker, to call me so late, because now I am able to put my question in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), who leads for the Opposition in our debates on the Official Secrets Bill, and of the four Ministers concerned. My question relates to Wednesday's business. How came so clever a man as the Home Secretary to be so confused on the radio this morning? Is that not typical of the geological flaws in the Bill? Is it satisfactory that Ministers should write letters over which they have taken a lot of trouble—such as that written by the Minister of State, Home Office—to me and to some of the Minister's own hon. Friends, when, lo and behold, phrases used in those letters appear nowhere in the Bill?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman appears to be addressing his questions to me. I know nothing about the matter. The hon. Gentleman must ask the Leader of the House for a statement.

Mr. Dalyell: Does the appearance of the Attorney-General on the Government Front Bench mean that we are in for better times this afternoon than on Monday? As a non-lawyer, I think that it is high time a lawyer came to the Committee and explained some of the points in the Bill. I commend to the Home Secretary the views of Lord Griffiths, chairman of the Security Commission, who appeared on television last Friday and said, "Of course, the judges do not read Hansard."They are not meant to read Hansard. They must judge matters on the basis of what is in the Bill. What is being said about vital issues in letters and in this House bears no relation to the Bill. The Home Secretary has not answered the key question, which was most eloquently put by a former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley arid Sidcup (Mr. Heath), about the difference between state interest and Government interest. Such matters must be cleared up.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are dealing with business questions to the Leader of the House. He appears to be taking the opportunity to raise points that should properly be raised in Committee.

Mr. Dalyell: Will we have the Attorney-General here?

Mr. Wakeham: When the hon. Gentleman talks about people being confused, I listen very carefully to what he has to say—because there is no greater expert in the House on that subject than him. The hon. Gentleman is wrong, and if he listens carefully to the debates, and perhaps takes a few notes as they progress, at the end of the day we may even straighten him out.

Mr. David Nicholson: Further to the subject of confusion, has my right hon. Friend had an opportunity to read my early-day motion 365, which has been signed by a number of my hon. and right hon. Friends?
[That this House notes the confusion and dismay which the leadership of the Right honourable Member for Yeovil is sowing in the Social and Liberal Democrat Party, in particular his conflicting statements in the same 'Times' interview that 'I have made a mistake in slamming the door on pacts…' and that 'I believe pacts won't work'; welcomes the Right honourable Member for Yeovil's long-delayed recognition that 'we have no definition', that 'no one really knows what we stand for' and that 'our members don't know'; notes that he is expecting the Democrats to lose about 200 seats in this May's important county council elections, including control of some county councils; welcomes the encouragement this gives to the heavily-burdened ratepayers, not only of Somerset, Devon, Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and the Isle of Wight, where the Democrats have held control for all or most of the time since 1985, but also of such counties as Cheshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Shropshire and Humberside, where the Democrat group keeps Labour in power; and expects Democrat emissaries will soon be begging the honourable Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed to take the lead and try to effect a rescue.]
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the House and the country would benefit from a debate on the confusion in the Liberal party and on the variety of pacts and alliances at local level between the Liberal and Labour parties?

Mr. Wakeham: It has been a moving scene for most of my time in the House, and even if I found time for a debate on the confusion and dismay in the Social and Liberal Democratic party I doubt that it would help to resolve the confusion.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the Leader of the House explain why the Prime Minister has run away from the debate next Tuesday on the subject of food and the various diseases connected therewith? Is it not a cockeyed way to run the Government's agenda, when, after all the furore in the course of the past week, with one Minister contradicting another and the Prime Minister having to try to clean up the mess, she is allowing one of those Ministers to open the debate and the other to close it? We shall have more contradiction and confusion. Will we have a statement on Wednesday to clear up the mess? Is it the case that the Prime Minister is not prepared to take on the argument that there is one law for the egg producers, who get £19 million, and another for tinplate workers in Wales who are thrown on the scrap heap, shipyard workers in Sunderland who lose their jobs and miners throughout Britain who cannot have the same kind of assistance?

Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman waxes eloquent on these matters, as usual, but it is by no means unprecedented for Cabinet Ministers with departmental responsibility to respond to debates in this way even when initiated by the Leader of the Opposition. This was the case in the debate on the National Health Service on 27 October 1983. My right hon. Friends are more than competent to deal with any matters that arise. At the end of the day, the Opposition may wish that they had chosen another subject.

Mr. Bill Walker: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider the answers he has given on the question of Moslem threats, because it appears from the Scottish media this morning that there are eight volunteers in Scotland prepared to carry out the assassination task? We do not want such people living in Scotland. That is the first thing. Secondly, we want a debate on the matter so that it may be properly aired in this place. The Labour party

could be given the opportunity during that debate to show that it supports measures which the House passes to deal with acts or terrorism.

Mr. Wakeham: I recognise what my hon. Friend says, but I detect even in the way he phrased the question sufficient justification to think that a debate in the House next week would not help to solve the problem.

Mr. Tony Banks: Will the Leader of the House say a bit more on the question of private Bill procedure? He has said for a number of weeks now that the Government are considering the Committee report very closely, but hon. Members on both sides of the House are getting very worried about the date for a debate. What sort of debate will it be? In the past he said that it would be a take-note debate. If the Government are now studying the report in great detail, will he tell us that we shall have a debate in which we can take decisions? Unless he does so, the suspicion on the Opposition side and the Government side will be that the Government are deliberately dragging their feet so that the private Bill for next Session on the fast routes through Kent will be dealt with under the existing private Bill procedure. We want a fairly short and sharp answer from the Leader of the House today.

Mr. Wakeham: If I had wanted delay, the easiest thing would have been to have a debate before anybody had had a chance to study the report. We could then just have forgotten about it. As it is, we are studying the matter in detail. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman in advance of the debate what line the Government will take, but I will make progress, discuss the matter through the usual channels and hope to find an arrangement that is satisfactory to the House.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the widespread concern about violence on the London Underground, and that the great interest in the Guardian Angels and other forms of possible defence of people threatened with violence is an example of this? May we have an early debate on this very important matter to see what further measures can be taken to ensure that the large numbers of people who travel on London Underground can do so in safety?

Mr. Wakeham: I agree that it is a very important subject and I recognise the concern. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Transport made some announcements a few days ago. I should like to initiate a debate, but I cannot promise one in the near future.

Points of Order

Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not by nature a whinger, because one has to take the rough with the smooth in this place, but during Prime Minister's Question Time you ruled me out of order when I was asking a question because you said, "It has got to be a matter for which she has responsibility." The question before mine was from the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) and he referred to the Labour party's defence policy. Where is the Prime Minister's responsibility concerning the Labour party's defence policy?
I was asking a question that involved the welfare of the Prime Minister's son and her future grandchild. I cannot see that there could be any other matter more closely within the Prime Minister's purview and area of responsibility than the welfare of her son and her grandchild. I therefore think, Mr. Speaker, that on this occasion you grossly overreacted, because you were seeking to defend the Prime Minister when there was no need for you to do so. I had mentioned to your secretary—because I thought that you might be a bit sensitive about this—that it would be a gentle question, and it was.
During business questions, the Leader of the House twice referred to the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). You, Mr. Speaker, did not say at any stage that that had nothing to do with the Leader of the House. What responsibility has the Leader of the House for the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington? That is the last time that I shall try the kid-glove approach.

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman looks at Hansard tomorrow, he will see that I said that the matter referred to had to be part of the Prime Minister's parliamentary responsibilities. If a Conservative Member had put a question of that kind about the Leader of the Opposition, there would have been uproar. When we are dealing with the Prime Minister's parliamentary responsibilities, there is no reason for hon. Members to introduce family relationships.

Mr. Doug Hoyle: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I always abide by your rulings, but it appeared that you applied one rule to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and another to the Leader of the House. Surely, if the Leader of the House refers to the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), he should he ruled out of order.

Mr. Speaker: Those are two entirely different things. It is a question of the context in which the question was put and the answer was given.

Mr. Tony Banks: rose—

Mr. Speaker: No, I shall not call the hon. Member again.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) has a point.
This is a matter directly for you, Mr. Speaker. I do not know whether you have noticed that in today's newspapers there is a report that the Italian Republican party, which I believe is a very Right-wing party, has suggested that it will be calling upon Liberals, or Social Democrats, or whatever they call themselves nowadays, to stand in Italy. That raises an interesting question for you. We had a long discussion about this the other day. What will be the position if they get an invitation to stand on behalf of the Italian party In Europe, in the Common Market or in Italy itself? Will the Chiltern Hundreds apply or the Manor of Northstead? Will we have to get out "Erskine May"? Will there have to be a new copy printed? This may lead to some very interesting developments. Will they get the Short money? Can they serve in both Parliaments? I could go on, but I know that we are very busy people. What is the answer?

Mr. Speaker: We are indeed very busy people. I think that the answer is for the hon. Gentleman to discuss this with me in private. I am sure that with his background of experience he will be able to give me some useful advice.

Mr. Tony Banks: rose—

Mr. Speaker: No. I have said to the hon. Member that I cannot help him any more.

BILL PRESENTED

AGE OF LEGAL CAPACITY (SCOTLAND)

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, supported by Mr. Bill Walker and Mr. Menzies Campbell, presented a Bill to make provision in the law of Scotland as to the legal capacity of persons under the age of 18 years to enter into transactions, as to the setting aside and ratification by the court of transactions entered into by such persons and as to guardians of persons under the age of 16 years: to make provision in the law of Scotland relating to the time and date at which a person shall he taken to attain a particular age; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered 10 be read a Second time on Friday 24 February and to be printed. [Bill 78.]

Orders of the Day — Official Secrets Bill

[2ND ALLOTTED DAY]

Committee [Progress, 15 February]

[SIR PAUL DEAN in the Chair.]

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): On a point of order, Sir Paul. I should like to refer to the points of order raised by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) at the beginning of each of the last two sittings of the Committee, on the relationship between solicitors and their clients. The House will find a point of order on 2 February at column 441 of Hansard, and my response recorded there. He also raised a point of order yesterday.
With your permission, Sir Paul, I should like to tell the Committee that, having considered the matter anew and taken further legal advice, we remain confident that the common law relating to legal professional privilege protects communication between a client and his solicitor of the kind I was addressing during the Committee proceedings on 25 January.
Legal professional privilege acts to prevent the production in evidence of such a communication and hence to deprive of its foundation any prosecution that might ever be sought to be founded on such a communication in the circumstances that the right hon. Gentleman envisaged in his first point of order. But of course it is well established that anyone who, when communicating with his solicitor, seeks the latter's help in the furtherence of some criminal purpose, is disqualified in respect of that communication from the benefit of privilege.
The function of legal professional privilege is to aid the administration of justice and not to aid crime. But such a person's position is quite different from that of someone who discloses information to his solicitor in the process of seeking advice in good faith about his own legal position in relation to it.
This is not a new issue. It has existed for many years under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 and there is absolutely no evidence that it has given rise to any practical difficulties for lawyers or for their clients.

Mr. Roy Hattersley: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. This will break new ground for points of order, but may I pursue the point as briefly as necessary, as we are constrained by the timetable motion?
The advice that the Minister of State gives to the Committee is in absolute contradistinction to the judgment made by the Law Society, which, as it is responsible for solicitors' relationships with their clients, may be thought to have some authority on these matters. It is also contrary to common sense, as it is unlikely in the House and outside that the practice to which the Minister refers can overrule—for that is what he implies—the

commitment in an Act of Parliament that specifies individuals who can pass on information, but does not include clients wishing to approach their solicitors.
May I raise a further, and genuine point of order— unlike the Minister of State's first statement and my response to it—about the problems that the Minister of State's statement raises for proceedings on the Bill? Clearly, the subject ought to be debated, but cannot be, because on a guillotine motion, clause stand part motions do not become debatable due to pressure of time. What is more, Sir Paul, with great respect to you and the Chairman of Ways and Means, an amendment that would have allowed us to clear up the matter, at least in part, has not been selected.
All I can do, therefore, is to make a ritual, but clearly very reasonable, complaint about the problems caused by the timetable motion, and ask that when Mr. Speaker and his advisers select the amendments for the Report stage, they understand that it is essential—a necessity compounded by the Minister of State's statement—that we are able to debate exactly this question and get it cleared up once and for all.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I will take one or two more points of order. I am sure that the Committee realises that I allowed that point of order from the Minister and a response from the Opposition Front Bench, but clearly it would not be in order to debate the matter, especially as we are operating under an allocation of time motion.

Mr. Michael Foot: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. May I say from the Back Benches that we have rights to protect in this sphere, just as much as have spokesmen from the Front Benches. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) agrees with that. We are in great difficulty. Obviously, this was an improper point of order in the first place. I am not blaming you, Sir Paul, because you did not know what the Minister was going to say. But surely, the Minister ought to have asked to make a statement, or made it absolutely clear to the House, rather than raising a point of order, that we would be given a chance to debate the matter in the later stages of the Bill. That is the only way in which the matter can now be remedied.
I hope that, as soon as the Home Secretary has a chance to take charge of his Bill again, we shall have a clear statement from him and an absolute guarantee that this matter, which should never have been put to the Committee as a point of order, will come up on Report when we shall have the chance of a proper debate. If necessary, further time should be granted, because the Government are apparently seeking to deal with a major matter by means of a point of order, and Back Benchers will have no chance of proper debate.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. I do not wish to be pedantic, but for non-lawyers this is the sort of statement that is much better to see in writing rather than to hear it once, so that one can look at the small print.
I have one question for the Minister. He used the phrase:
seeking advice in good faith.


I am not sure how we can prove good faith or otherwise, but do we take it that, in general, any communication between a solicitor and someone who approaches him is privileged? I am thinking especially of the position of Brian Raymond.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. The Minister was kind enough to make a statement and if I understood it correctly, he made it clear that his authority was the common law, and not statute law. Could I ask him, through you, Sir Paul, if he will publish in the Official Report, or at least circulate in correspondence, as the Front Bench is wont to do at present, to those of us who are interested, the authorities of common law; in other words, the case law and the judgments that make up that case law? Then we can all have a look at an issue that must be at least debatable, as it seems to conflict with the Law Society's views.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. Is it not the case that common law is subordinate to statute and that in the circumstances it is inappropriate for the Government to rely upon common law?

Mr. Hattersley: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. You will understand, and I think from your demeanour you sympathise with, the fact that the point of order I raised was a response to the Minister's statement, for statement it was. You were kind enough to allow me to reply.
I now raise what by any standards can be regarded only as a point of order, concerning the intolerable position into which the Committee has been put by the Minister's behaviour. The Minister made his statement under the guise of a point of order. Quite rightly, Sir Paul, you would prevent that statement from being cross-examined in the way that statements usually are. The Leader of the House and the Home Secretary, who are in the Chamber, have a duty to make sure that the situation is redressed. We must have a statement, given as a statement, on some occasion, so that we may question the Minister.
To allow a point of order that puts on record a contentious viewpoint without its being cross-examined in the usual way is an abuse of the proceedings of the House.

The First Deputy Chairman: I cannot take this matter any further at the moment. I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench have heard what is being said. I shall of course report to Mr. Speaker what is being said. Without, of course, making any commitment for him, I am sure that he will take this discussion into account when he makes his selection for the Report stage of the Bill.

Clause 7

AUTHORISED DISCLOSURES

Mr. Robert Maclennan: I beg to move amendment No. 74, in page 7, line 17, at end insert
'or
(c) to a Member of Parliament.'.

Mr. Maclennan: Clause 7 deals with authorised disclosures of official information. The purpose of my amendment is to enable an officer to whom a disclosure of information has been made to pass that information to a Member of Parliament in certain restricted circumstances.

Under clause 7(3), a member of the public who obtains protected information commits an offence by disclosing it to anyone else, unless the disclosure is to a civil servant or has been authorised. My amendment would allow a member of the public to disclose such information to an hon. Member.
It is important that the House recognises that the amendment does not apply to disclosures by civil servants, but only to disclosures by other persons—members or the public. Therefore, it does not provide a direct channel for a civil servant who wishes to leak information to a Member of Parliament and it does not deal with the Ponting point. A disclosure by a civil servant, whether to a journalist or a Member of Parliament, would not be protected by the amendment.
It follows that the amendment does nothing to make leaks more likely. The person at the beginning of the chain would commit an offence. However, it would protect a member of the public into whose hands a leaked document came and whose only disclosure of protected information was to a Member of Parliament.
If one has to decide who is an appropriate person to whom protected information should be disclosed, there is no one more accessible or more suitable than a Member of Parliament.

Mr. John Gorst: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he intends to bracket a Member of Parliament with a Member of the European Parliament as being synonymous?

Mr. Maclennan: I did not do so in the amendment, but, in the light of the decisions that the House took last night about leaked information from the European Parliament, it would be reasonable for us to address the question whether there might be a case for extending the cover. However, I did not make that proposal in the amendment.
It is widely recognised that Members of Parliament are accessible to their constituents in a manner that makes them the natural people to turn to if information of a protected kind should come into the possession of a member of the public. Members of the House of Commons are honourable and are to be entrusted with the task of dealing appropriately with information that they are handed by their constituents or any other member of the public. If a member of the public received such protected information, he would be at a loss to know to whom to turn if he could not turn to his Member of Parliament. Therefore, I commend the amendment to the Committee.

Mr. Aitken: I have some sympathy for the amendment which I understand would give some protection to a Member of Parliament who was simply carrying out the perfectly fair and honourable role of being as little as a mere conduit pipe between a Crown servant and perhaps the Government of the day.
I can well envisage circumstances in which a member of the security services, or someone who had been notified under the Act, might seek advice from his Member of Parliament on what he should do in the light of his anxiety about something that had gone wrong inside the security services or the defence establishment, on which, for one reason or another, he had not had adequate redress or a fair hearing through the normal channels of communication.
A Member of Parliament is quite used to such an approach at a constituency surgery or in correspondence. Such approaches are received several times during one's career as a Member of Parliament, if not always from officials who would be designated under the Act. There should be some protection in the Act of a complainant's civil rights, and, indeed, those of a Member of Parliament.
In case anyone thinks that that is all fanciful stuff, let me take the House back to an episode that has been well reported by Mr. Chapman Pincher and others, in which I played a modest conduit pipe role, in the months following the disclosures in 1979, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister came to the Dispatch Box having decided, as a result of a written question from the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter), to reveal that Mr. Blunt had been a traitor and had been granted immunity.
Up to that moment, inside the security services there had been much tighter secrecy and general acceptance that the vow of omerta, or absolute secrecy, should prevail under all circumstances, than appears to be the case today. There is no doubt that, when some Crown servants read my right hon. Friend's disclosure—a right and proper disclosure in the national interest—they felt that the statement was not as full as it should have been in the light of extra information that they had. Therefore, they wondered what to do in order to reveal certain additional information.
For various reasons linked with a mutual friend, one such Crown servant approached me. I am saying nothing new, simply telling a story, perhaps rather more accurately than Mr. Chapman Pincher has already told it. That former Crown servant was a man whom I knew only as a member of the Clerks Department in the House, a Mr. Arthur Martin, who had previously been a Crown servant in the Security Service. He felt strongly that the Prime Minister's statement had left unmentioned some vital matters and he feared that she might not even be aware of that herself. His fundamental fear was that the Prime Minister had gone in to bat on that major issue of Blunt without being fully briefed on the alleged treachery of Sir Roger Hollis. I know that hon. Members hold many views on that. The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) feels that those fears were completely groundless and that Sir Roger Hollis's reputation has been unjustifiably besmirched.
But be that as it may, let any hon. Member put himself in the position in which I found myself, of being told out of the blue the amazing story that a former head of our security services had been a Soviet agent and that a formidable body of opinion inside the security services not only believed that and had a committee set up which reported that they believed it, but also had set up an extra inquiry under Sir Burke Trend. All those matters had gone on inside the barrier of secrecy but, allegedly, might not have been fully known to the Prime Minister of the day.
What should any Member of Parliament do in those circumstances? Exactly, I suggest, what I did after consulting a couple of close friends who were Privy Councillors. I wrote the whole story down in a letter and sent it to the Prime Minister, after which, for some months, there was complete secrecy and silence, and then in due course, the Prime Minister responded in confidence.
My point is that any Back Bencher could suddenly have been given a disclosure such as that which seemed to me at that time to be of earth-shaking proportions. I am sure that any Back Bencher, whatever his party loyalties, would have taken more or less the same course that I took—to act as a mere conduit pipe and pass it on to the responsible Minister, in this case the Prime Minister. Against the background of that anecdote—which I assure the House is entirely accurate—I submit that there could easily be similar instances in the future.

Mr. Nicholas Budgen: If we are to be used as conduit pipes, and, for the sake of argument, it becomes a criminal offence to receive that information, how in practical terms can a Member of Parliament stop himself receiving it? If someone sits in one's surgery and says something or sends one a letter, how can one stop oneself receiving that information?

Mr. Aitken: I am glad to see that for the first time during these debates my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General is present, because he will be aware that a "conduit pipe" is an expression in law. It is not a piece of plumbing or drainage, but is, in fact, a legal term meaning a quite innocent party who does no more than transmit the information onward. Certainly, if a Member of Parliament were to be more than a conduit pipe—for example, if he spoke on the radio, put down parliamentary questions, or made a song and dance about it—I can see that he could exceed what might be called his normal lawful responsibilities.

Mr. Gorst: Probably for the purposes of clarity, my hon. Friend is slightly oversimplifying the situation. His premise is that the communication that he or any other Member of Parliament receives will be from a named person. However, as any Member of Parliament who has been here for a short time will know, one often receives anonymous communications. If we receive anonymous communications, that poses a new set of problems. If the amendment is not accepted, people will be more inclined to send anonymous communications than named ones. Will my hon. Friend deal with that aspect of the problem too?

Mr. Aitken: It would certainly make the role of a Member of Parliament even more innocent if he were to act simply as a post office for anonymous communications. I believe, however, that, if the material were entirely anonymous, most of us would not communicate it to Ministers of the Crown, but would throw it straight into the wastepaper basket.
There are clearly variations on the theme. Even if a repeat performance of a former head of the anti-Soviet division and the Security Service telling a Back Bencher that the head of the Security Service is a Soviet agent is unlikely, it is nevertheless likely that some Crown servant may approach his Member of Parliament and tell him a story that the Member feels he must pass on. What will be the position of the Member if he passes on that information? As I understand it, under the Bill he could quite easily—depending on the goodwill of the prosecutor or the Attorney-General—be heading for Wormwood Scrubs.

Mr. David Winnick: In the case of Sir Roger Hollis, if some members of the Security Service felt that there were serious allegations that could not be dealt with in a manner that was considered satisfactory, would


it not have been better for a Member of Parliament to intervene, because either way that might have cleared up the matter? Sir Roger Hollis's name might have then been cleared. However, now, whether he was guilty or not, there will always be a question mark about his integrity. If he was innocent—as one hopes he was—the matter would have been resolved at the time. Perhaps if a Member of Parliament had had that information in his hands and had pursued it, the outcome would have been much better.

Mr. Aitken: How the members of the Fluency committee of the security services and the group of Security Service officials known rather inappropriately—in view of their snow-white hair and elderly demeanour—as the young Turks tried to transmit their fears to higher authority is a long and tortuous saga. It had many amusing byways, including one member insisting on ringing the doorbell of No. 10 Downing street and not leaving the front hall until he was shown to the office of the Cabinet Secretary. They did try to transmit their fears about major penetration of the security services.
I am focusing on the narrow point of the role of a Member of Parliament. A Member doing all the right things, operating entirely correctly and honourably and in accordance with what all sensible right hon. and hon. Members would feel right and proper, would have no protection under the Bill. The only protection that I can envisage is his reliance on the Attorney-General's discretion not to prosecute him. I have considerable faith in the Attorney-General's discretion, certainly when the Attorney-General is as reasonable and as eminent a figure as my right hon. and learned Friend.
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I now come specifically to amendment No. 74. Do we need in statute any better protection for Members of Parliament? We do not seek any special privileges, but we must recognise that in our role as constituency Members, holding surgeries, receiving correspondence and listening to the grievances of our constituents, we might face such a situation as I faced in early 1980.
I believe, therefore, that there is merit in the amendment of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery)—who unfortunately is unable to be here because he has 'flu—also feels that some special legal status should be written into the Bill. There is a case for doing something along the lines of the amendment, and I therefore cautiously support it.

Mr. Foot: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) in the case which he was putting. I hope that the Government will give serious attention to the amendment or to one that could achieve the same absolutely clear effect. This is one of the most important aspects of the Bill that we still have to debate. I am not saying, however, that some of the proposed amendments do not also provide ways in which we can proceed, and 1 have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) will be putting our case. After all the discussion, we must get the matter cleared up before we leave this part of the Bill.
When I saw that the Leader of the House was present, I thought that he would intervene on the House of Commons aspect. I am very glad to welcome both him and

the Attorney-General to our debate. It appears that our appeals for his attendance have carried great weight in the Government, and for the first time we have the Attorney-General present. Now that he has come, I hope that he will not be gagged. I hope that he will have every opportunity of putting forward his case on this matter, which is one which has been brought to the attention of previous Attorneys-General. I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have not come to the House without all the detail at his very skilled fingertips. We shall have the advantage of his views later.
I still have hopes that the Leader of the House may participate in the debate. I am not saying this in denigration of the Home Secretary, who is capable of dealing with some parts of the Bill, but perhaps the Leader of the House and the Attorney-General are better qualified to deal with this part.
Of course, the case in which the hon. Member for Thanet, South and others were involved has been recalled previously in our debates and in our approach to the idea of having a new Official Secrets Act. One of the memories of the House of Commons on this sort of point is that of the Sandys case. I shall not recite it all, but I believe that hon. Members have not understood exactly the conclusion of that case. That makes it all the more important that, when we get a Bill that carries out what the House presumably wants to be the law to govern these matters for the next 20 or 30 years—as long perhaps as the 1911 Act was the law, but let us do better than that—we are sure of the rights of the House of Commons and of Members of Parliament.
We must be sure about the rights of hon. Members. Although the Sandys case happened under a Conservative Government which had a very powerful majority, we must ensure that there is no recurrence of the interference in the rights of hon. Members which was tolerated by the Conservative Government in 1938 and in 1939. When I say that, I am speaking not only on behalf of the Labour and Liberal Members who protested so strongly then, but: on behalf of the very small minority of brave Conservative Members who were determined to stand by Winston Churchill as he was conducting one of the most difficult fights of his career. He had fewer followers than the hon. Member for Thanet, South, who has been tabling amendments to this Bill. Hon. Members can guess, therefore, how difficult it must have been to put the case.
The Conservative Government in 1938 had a Chief Whip who believed that all the matters should be pushed through. The present Leader of the House is very different, although sometimes I think that he has adopted Captain Margesson as his model and wants to live up to the way in which Captain Margesson forced through some of the worst measures that have ever passed through the House of Commons at some of our most dangerous moments.
The crisis of the Duncan Sandys case was never concluded. No decision was taken after a Member of Parliament had been arraigned by a Minister because he tried to bring to the attention of the Minister's Department some of the deficiencies in the plans for the defence of London. Those were very important matters, but the Government of the day tried to interfere with a Member of Parliament carrying out his duties. The Government acted against the person who went to Mr. Duncan Sandys and provided him with the information.
The Duncan Sandys case occurred at a critical moment in the history of this country. Having lived through that


experience, the House should have said, "Well, let's clear up the matter. Let's make sure we never have a Government who exercise ministerial power in the way in which that Government acted through Mr. Hore-Belisha." He thought, and no doubt was advised by the Law Officer of the day, that he was making perfectly proper use of his powers under the Official Secrets Act.
Churchill did not bring the matter to the House, because he thought that the Margesson-Neville Chamberlain majority would be used against him to crush his case. He had no confidence that if he brought the case to the House, he would receive any sympathy even though such great issues for the future and safety of the country were involved. Therefore, the matter was left.
No decision had been taken by the House of Commons by the time the second world war broke out. No decision had been taken to condemn the actions of Hore-Belisha and the others. There was some slight protection in the sense that parts of the matter were referred to the Committee of Privileges. To some extent, the Committee upheld Duncan Sandys and his supporters. That was not an absolute protection and even the Committee of Privileges, as far as I understand the full details of the case, did not report to the House so that the House could make a final decision. The matter was left in the air, and that happened in a very important case involving such an eminent Member of this House as Churchill who had shown that he was much more aware of the safety of the nation and the country's public interest than the Government were. Even in those circumstances, the matter was not brought to a proper conclusion.
The nearest that the matter came to a conclusion was when Churchill—for reasons that I have explained, he did not come to the House, because he did not think that he would receive fair treatment here at the time—wrote to the Evening Standard anonymously, which was a most curious development, and explained how the Official Secrets Act should be applied in future after the experience of the case. He said that it should be applied to spies and people who attack the safety of the nation, but that there must be an obsolute exclusion from the operation of the Official Secrets Act for journalists and others obtaining information of that kind and, of course, for Members of Parliament.
I have no doubt that if Churchill had had his way and had been able to reform the Official Secrets Act in 1939 or 1940, he would have insisted on a clause to prevent the kind of treatment that he and Duncan Sandys received at the hands of the Conservative Government. Part of that protection would have applied to a Member of Parliament and his rights if he was approached with information. I do not want to give the present Government any easy get-out. An alteration to the clause or to the part of the Bill in which these matters are laid down may be necessary. In some way it should be stated that it will be impossible for the circumstances of 1938 and 1939 to recur.
When we raised these issues a few weeks ago, the Minister of State replied to the debate as if the matter was dealt with and there was no need to worry. That is not right. Now that we are clarifying the Official Secrets Act—leaving aside our arguments about whether some parts make defence more difficult for people who want to protect themselves—we must ensure that the approach to

a Member of Parliament is covered. It will not be covered simply by leaving matters as they are. It will not be covered unless there is something specific in the Bill. It will not be covered simply by giving general assurances.
If the Home Secretary says that these matters could go to the Committee of Privileges, that will not do. Some matters could be dealt with by a reference to the Committee of Privileges and part of the Sandys case was referred to such a Committee, but that was not the solution.
The Home Secretary should include a reference in the Bill to how an approach to a Member of Parliament is protected. The rights of hon. Members must be explained. We must ensure that, as the law is being changed, the folly, monstrosity or crime—whatever we want to call it—that occurred in the few years before 1940 will never happen again. Now that the Home Secretary has legal assistance, I hope that he will give us that guarantee.

Mr. Kenneth Hind: While I appreciate that it is a matter of grave concern that people who are notified or public servants who are party to confidential information should be able to talk to Members of Parliament, the major concern must be what hon. Members do with that information.
Under amendment No. 74 there is the right for a civil servant to disclose information to a Member of Parliament. If I read the amendment correctly, the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) is suggesting that what the Member of Parliament does with the information, irrespective of the damage or harm that it may do, is totally in his hands. The Member of Parliament is in no way responsible for looking after the national interest or for avoiding damage to the nation's interest.
I hope that when he responds to the debate, the hon. Gentleman will say that that is incorrect. I suggest that he looks carefully at the earlier clauses in the Bill, particularly clause 5. There is nothing within those earlier clauses to prevent either a civil servant or an official of the secret service who is notified from passing information to a Member of Parliament, provided that the Member uses the information responsibly and not in such a way as to cause harm to the national interest. Such a person is already covered by the Bill.
If information is disclosed to us, as Members of Parliament, and we use it responsibly—there are a number of ways in which we could use it that would pass the harm test—we will be covered by the Bill and the amendment will be unnecessary.

Mr. Budgen: What would be considered responsible?

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Mr. Hind: It is open to all of us in receipt of such information to pursue the matter through the channels open to us.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman is advancing an amazing argument. Did he not see or read about what happened in the United States over the Watergate scandal? Does he actually think that President Nixon and the United States Government thought that what they were doing was in the public interest, and was not damaging to it? Does he not understand that, if disclosures had not been made, the Watergate scandal would never have come out and people


would never have known about it. Without disclosure such matters remain hidden. Does the hon. Gentleman live in the real world?

Mr. Hind: The hon. Gentleman has a point, but he must bear in mind the fact that the Bill covers not only that type of information—which obviously points to the misdoings of the Executive, and should be exposed—but sensitive information that could cause much damage to the nation if exposed. That is why the harm test exists.
I say that Members of Parliament should use such information responsibly because it is up to them to decide to which category the information relates. There is obviously the sort of information that was mentioned in an earlier debate—the information passed by Captain Scott to one of his relatives during the last war about the state of our tanks in the western desert and our inability to defend them against German guns. Such information could have been passed to a Member of Parliament who could have used it responsibly through the channels open to him—the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office or the appropriate Minister—saying that information had come to his notice and something should be done about it. No harm would then have been done to the national interest, and the Germans would not have been aware that we were considering the circumstances and taking the appropriate measures to deal with them.

Mr. Maclennan: If the hon. Gentleman looks at clause 7(3), he will see that the member of the public into whose hands the official information comes has no proper channel of communication other than through a Crown servant. How many of the hon. Gentleman's constituents know Crown servants to whom it is appropriate that they should convey prohibited information
in accordance with an official authorisation"?
What would that mean to the hon. Gentleman's constituents who might come into possession of extremely sensitive information? What would be the proper channel for them to use? The clause seems to make it impossible to communicate such information without committing an offence.

Mr. Hind: The hon. Gentleman ignores the fact that the harm test covers the matter. Surely there is no reason why a person who came into possession of such information should not approach his Member of Parliament, tell him of the circumstances and say, "I wish you to treat this information appropriately, with all possible responsibility and in confidence." Provided that no harm stemmed from the disclosure of the information, no offence would be committed.
There is no reason, even within the present framework of the Bill, why that could not be done. The basis of the offence—which is relevant—is the damage that is done to the national interest. These debates have constantly ignored that point.

Mr. Maclennan: The hon. Gentleman's point about the harm test is a red herring in this context. How is a lay member of the public into whose hands the protected information falls to determine whether its disclosure will cause harm? The existence of a harm test will not offer him any practical assistance in determining what to do with the information. If it is sensitive information, he must decide whether to put it in the fire or whether it warrants official action. The only choice open to him under clause 7(3) is to

pass the information to a Crown servant, but in my view it would be more appropriate for him to submit it to his Member of Parliament.

Mr. Hind: Crown servants are bound by the code contained in the Bill, and they include police officers. Why could not the person to whom the hon. Gentleman referred approach a police officer with the information? Will the hon. Gentleman show me where in the Bill there is any requirement for a Member of Parliament to be bound by the same code of practice as a Crown servant to act in the same responsible way? It does not exist.
There is nothing in the Bill to stop Members of Parliament using the information in whatever way they wish. Their actions are not controlled in any way, and that creates a charter for irresponsibility for people who wish to abuse the national interest for political reasons.
Clause 5 perfectly covers the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman has described. Members of Parliament have a responsibility to act in the national interest. I appreciate that we have to evaluate what is in the national interest, but we have channels open to us to do so. All those people whom the hon. Gentleman has brought to the attention of the House have access to police officers—who are Crown servants—to whom they can turn.

Mr. Hattersley: I intervene principally to urge the Home Secretary—if we are to be privileged to hear him speak—to make an early statement on these matters. We were tempted with the news that the Leader of the House might speak, but I understand that the clauses have been rearranged so that he may merely sit here rather than participate in the debate.
I hope that the Home Secretary will speak, for two reasons. First, a problem of the guillotine is that trenchant speeches are followed by an inadequate reply, with no opportunity for hon. Members to pursue a Minister after he has made one statement. Secondly, perhaps in contradiction to that first point, I hope that the Home Secretary will clarify some points that desperately need clarifying and bring the debate back into the realms of reality, particularly in light of what was said by the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind).
The hon. Gentleman seems to be talking about a different Bill. As I understand it, clause 7 applies to the Bill as a whole. As it interprets the Bill as a whole, nearly all the cases of importance are not covered by the harm test. Clause I is the important clause in interpretation. It prompted the example given by the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken). Yet the hon. Gentleman talks as though the harm test would solve these problems. He either has not read the Bill or does not understand it. I would not dream of correcting him as categorically as he needs correcting, but I hope that the Home Secretary will put him right and explain that there are categories of public servants.
With respect to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), it will not be the man in the street or the Caithness crofter who comes to his Member of Parliament to tell him some crucial information that he needs to know. It will be a public servant or a retired public servant. They are the people of whom we spoke in the Sandys and the Churchill cases. We are considering not the man in the street but the man with special information which he thinks, in the interest of the state, should be conveyed to a Member of Parliament.

Mr. Hind: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that a present civil servant, a secret service officer or a retired official will still be subject to the harm test in the situation that he has described?

Mr. Hattersley: Of course I do not agree. I do not know how anybody who has read the Bill or who has heard our discussions can believe that a civil servant in the Security Service, covered by clause 1, is subject to the harm test. The first two days of debate were concerned with the proposition that the security services were not covered by any harm test, but had an absolute obligation. If the hon. Gentleman does not understand that, we shall not make much progress in this matter.
I want to consider the man who is not covered by the harm test and who has information that he thinks important to convey to a Member of Parliament, as in the Churchill or Sandys cases. I shall make my position clear. I am far more worried about protecting the informant than about protecting the Member of Parliament. The hon. Member for Lancashire, West was wholly wrong to say that a Member of Parliament is in any way protected by the Bill. The protected categories are stipulated and Members of Parliament do not number among them; ergo, they are not protected. I have sufficient faith—if that is the word—in the British establishment to believe that in the modern circumstances, even the Attorney-General—a man of undoubted objectivity and probity—would think twice before prosecuting a Member of Parliament for receiving that information or for raising it in the House.

Mr. Gorst: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in practice, Members of Parliament will be protected by Parliament?

Mr. Hattersley: They will certainly be protected in their use in the House of information supplied to them, but the hon. Gentleman will recall that the Home Secretary said earlier that, were I or the hon. Gentleman to receive protected information, although the House of Commons would protect when we used the information here, if either of us went to St. Stephen's entrance and repeated the information outside, that would be a different kettle of fish.

Mr. Budgen: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hattersley: I know that the hon. Gentleman is on the right side, so I do not want to deter him, but I want to finish this point.
There would be no legal protection for him or me were we to use that information outside, but I am sceptical about whether the Attorney-General would mount a prosecution, except in the grossest and most extreme circumstances. I give way to the hon. Gentleman, if he is still interested.

Mr. Budgen: Does that not give rise to an unsatisfactory anomaly between Members of Parliament and members of the public? The right hon. Gentleman is really saying that he supported the decision taken in The Daily Telegraph case, when my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), who was then a young member of the public, was prosecuted, as was the editor of The Daily Telegraph, whereas Sir Hugh Fraser, who was then the right hon. Member for Stafford, was not prosecuted, although he had done exactly the same thing, simply because he was a Member of Parliament and a Privy Councillor.

Mr. Hattersley: I am always sceptical when a question begins by asking whether what I am really saying is something other than what I said. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am wholly on his side in the drift of what he said. I do not believe that a Member of Parliament should have the advantages that I have described. 1 merely suggested that in a wicked world—even the Attorney-General inhabits the same wicked world—it is more likely that a Member of Parliament will escape prosecution than an individual. That is why I said that my principal concern was not for the Member of Parliament who received the information but for the individual who passed it on. It is that individual whom I want to protect.

Mr. Dalyell: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, although I do not pretend to be able to read the mind of the Ponting jury, it seemed that it weighed heavily with the jurors that, instead of running to the press with information that could have come only from one of the people to whom my right hon. Friend referred, who knew a heck of a lot about the particular subject and how the House of Commons had been deceived, I gave it to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, so it was deemed to be a proceeding in Parliament? That is an important point in backing up my right hon. Friend's argument. If these matters are kept as proceedings in Parliament, that may weigh with juries.

Mr. Gorst: rose—

Mr. Hattersley: I shall not give way again because, 10 minutes ago, I said that I would intervene briefly, in the hope that I might intervene again after the Home Secretary had made his statement. I have been helped by so much support from hon. Members of all parties that I have gone on longer than I intended.
I want to make a point to the Home Secretary in the hope that he will let us know the Government's views. It seems to many hon. Members that one of the essential elements in our freedom is the right of a man or woman to approach a Member of Parliament on any issue about which they feel the Member of Parliament should know. For a constituent to be prevented by law from telling his or her Member of Parliament some item of information that the constituent believes should be passed on seems to many of us to be a basic contradiction of the liberties that should characterise this place.
I ask the Home Secretary to tell us whether the Government will incorporate amendment No. 74 in the Bill and, if the Government are not prepared to do so, what their objections are. Are the Government saying that Members of Parliament cannot be trusted? Are they saying that the mere fact of pasing information on, in clause 1 cases, is a danger and that a total limit must be placed on all circumstances, whether there is any real need for it or not? We need to know at this early stage whether the Government are prepared to incorporate amendment No. 74 or something similar, or their objections; otherwise we shall not have the proper debate that the subject warrants.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: I support the drift of the amendment. It is important against the background of the saga through which we arrived at the Bill, when one remembers the actions that have been pursued through the courts. The House will recall that during those actions the final judgment that my right hon. and learned Friend the


Attorney-General submitted in the case against sundry newspapers made certain contentions. Lord Griffiths then made an observation. In saying that there was an unexceptionable and lifelong duty of confidentiality for those civil servants covered by clause 1(1) and the designated or nominated class of persons, he expressed an anxiety. He said:
theoretically, if a member of the service discovered that some iniquitous course of action was being pursued that was clearly detrimental to our national interest, and he was unable to persuade any senior members of his service or any member of the establishment, or the police, to do anything about it, then he should be relieved of his duty of confidence so that he could alert his fellow citizens to the impending danger.
That proposition was behind the public interest defence that we tried to insert, which the Government have seen off. The amendment is another route to provide a safety valve in the extraordinary circumstances envisaged by Lord Griffiths, that if everything went wrong, there should be a legitimate way of alerting one's fellow citizens. It seems wholly appropriate that the last line in a democracy should be those who are elected to represent the public's interest in the national forum—the House of Commons.

Mr. Gorst: Suppose that, under privilege, we could reveal the circumstances that my hon. Friend has in mind. Is my hon. Friend not worried that, as prior publication is no defence, the press will not have the defence that the information has been published in the House if it carries the contents of a speech—unless we can get an assurance that the privilege that protects the reporting of our proceedings will be carried forward regardless of what the Bill says?

Mr. Shepherd: That presupposes that it is necessary to expose the iniquity on the Floor of the House. Each individual Member must judge that for himself. I was deeply disheartened by the emphasis placed by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) on what he perceived to be a responsible Member. One of the glories of this place is that those judged irresponsible often turn out in the long run to be the most responsible. This may sound like special pleading, but in this solemn and over-pompous place it is often judged that quite correct actions are irresponsible. When dealing with liberties we should be mindful that it is often important to say things that run contrary to the popular ethos of the day or to the Government's interest.

Mr. Hind: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Earlier in the debate, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) correctly picked me up on a point concerning the receipt of a disclosure from someone who has been notified. Surely the person who is notified commits an offence by disclosing the information to a Member of Parliament and someone who is not notified is subject to the harm test. We have a responsibility to consider the matter very carefully—especially in respect of somebody who has been notified. We have to decide where the national interest lies. We have a heavy responsibility in that regard, and must be extremely careful. Channels are open to us—through the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister—to pursue these matters. That was the point that I sought to make.

Mr. Shepherd: At the bottom of each case is a question of judgment. Every citizen has a duty to try to exercise his judgment as best he can, with regard to the nation and the circumstances in which he lives. I respect that point.
I was arguing on the basis of the preface to Lord Griffiths's judgment, and saying that one might possibly conceive of circumstances in which it was necessary to alert the public to a danger. The Government have been consistent in their view that there can be no danger that cannot be remedied internally. They argue that the Bill can satisfy all the possible contingencies that every hon. Member—and Lord Griffiths—can imagine. The Bill is defective in that very assertion. In an important speech yesterday, the hon. Member for Caithness and Sunderland (Mr. Maclennan) talked about that assertion in relation to the European convention on human rights.
The Government are constructing legislation that will bring us before the European Court of Human Rights because it allows only for the internal review of possible grave injustices. The authority of the state alone—unsupervised, and unchecked—may make unreviewable decisions on all these matters. I think that the Bill will fall before the European Court of Human Rights and I do not know many lawyers who think otherwise, although the Government seem to have their own special legal advice on these matters. It is important to caution them again and again about the dangers of not providing arrangements for the independent review of decisions that affect freedom of speech and our liberties in general. That is where the Government will come into conflict with the European court.
Were the option left open to me—the Government have wilfully closed most avenues to us—I should find it extraordinary that they should take the view that there should be no last-chance mechanism by which one can remedy an iniquity or possible danger to fellow citizens of the kind to which Lord Griffiths referred in his judgment.
Lord Griffiths's judgment is not the only judgment that we have had. I consider the Bill very much as the Baron Armstrong Bill. That gentleman has argued for most of the principles in the Bill in front of almost every court that he can find. In each court—in one court after another—the judge has overturned the central contention that there is an absolute lifelong duty, which cannot encompass the possibility that anyone else should ever have sight of a balanced reflection or an alternative view.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) has repeatedly reminded us of Mr. Justice Scott's observation—that this Government are
demanding a degree of confidence that cannot be achieved this side of the iron curtain. Yet we sit here while the Government pass the Bill in to law. It is a mistake, and it will be confounded by a court which, fortunately, can override the judicial decisions and view of the Government, and which is sited outside the realm.
The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) referred to the Duncan Sandys case, and mentioned the function of the Committee of Privileges. The Times recently carried an important letter from a former colleague of ours, Mr. Christopher Price. Referring to the nature of privilege, he quoted a Privileges Committee report:
The privilege of freedom of speech enjoyed by Members of Parliament is in truth the privilege of their constituents. It is secured to Members not for their personal benefit but to enable them to discharge the functions of their office without


fear of prosecution, civil or criminal. The Commons, in their famous protestation of 1621, declared the privileges of Parliament to be the birthright and inheritance of the subject.
That is what the House of Commons is about. There is an assault on the very basis of our liberal democracy every time Government assert that only they may take a view of what constitutes national security.
A little later, we shall have a very important debate on the issue of prior publication. That, too, touches the very nature of our democracy. Judgments in the United States and Canada—and in our own history—have overturned many of the contentions in the Bill.

Mr. Dalyell: The hon. Gentleman may not have wanted to quote two further sentences from Christopher Price's letter:
This is why the drafters of the 1688 Bill of Rights separated the powers of the High Court of Justice from the High Court of Parliament so clearly; it was also the basis for the acquittal of Clive Ponting by a British jury. They saw Ponting's action, like that of Duncan Sandys, as in the public interest and therefore incapable of being criminal.
Christopher Price's point is doubly valid.

Mr. Shepherd: I should have read the House that assertion because it is important to remind the Government that the course on which they have embarked serves neither the interests of the Government and the Conservative party, nor those of the House and the country.
As there is unlikely to be a debate on clause stand part, I should add that I do not think that the amendment goes far enough. It is defective, because, as has been pointed out, there is a tremendous anomaly. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has advised us that one of the liberalising aspects—in fact, it is a dangerous aspect—of the Bill is that former and existing Security Service officers could be called to give evidence in court. A newspaper that cites its source could render itself liable to prosecution, albeit with some form of damage test. It is quite respectable for a newspaper to want to call its source to give aid to its defence. The Home Secretary accepts that there will not be Crown prosecution immunity certificates and tells us that that is one of the risks.
Clearly, the contention is that the Crown servant—the member of the Security Service—may give the information only to fellow Crown servants. That is the only way in which Crown servants can be relieved of their duty of confidentiality. What happens when the Crown servant is asked to give evidence in court? He has a conflict of duty, because he has the duty of a citizen to give evidence under oath but the Bill explicitly rules that out.
The law reform committee of the Law Society of Scotland says of this clause:
This would permit a disclosure by a Crown servant or, in certain cases, another notified person as being with lawful authority if it was made in accordance with his official duty. We are concerned that this would still leave cases of conflicting duties where the position of the person concerned would be unresolved. If a Crown servant is giving evidence on oath, for example, and is asked in effect to disclose information covered by clause 1(1), he clearly has, in one sense, a duty to disclose, but this cannot be called his official duty as such. We do not comment as to which duty should prevail in such circumstances, but believe that a clear resolution should be provided by statute for such a conflict.
That seems to be a wholly respectable position to adopt.
While I do not think that the amendment is the most satisfactory way of remedying the anxieties that will clearly confront our constitution and, I believe, will render the value of this House, in the eyes of citizens, as being ever more marginal than they now perceive it to be, I commend it to my right hon. Friend as a way of helping the Government out of the impossible dilemma that they have provided for themselves.

Mr. Heffer: We may not agree entirely with everything that the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has said, but the Government should at least take a look at this amendment and perhaps bring forward a more suitable one covering the proposals that have been made today.
I should like to comment on one or two things that have been said about this matter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) made the point that the Attorney-General would not be rushing to prosecute Members of the House of Commons—and he has great respect for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as I have. What worries me is whether "Queen Margaret" or "Mother" would be in quite the same frame of minor Would the Attorney-General make the decision? Would the Prime Minister be breathing down his neck? It is just conjecture, but I am not happy about the way the Government are going at the present time. I am not happy about the Prime Minister's actions.

The Attorney-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's kind compliment, but what he has just posited as a possibility is rather in conflict with it. May I assure him that every one of my predecessors in modern times has always brought to the question of prosecution a judicial mind and would have dismissed instantly any suggestion that he could be subjected to any pressure of the kind that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned. In my experience this has been so clearly understood by all the Attorney's colleagues as really not to be worthy of sensible consideration at all.

Mr. Heffer: And long may it remain so. What worries me is that if Ministers—even the Attorney-General—came into total conflict with the right hon. Lady they might find themselves out of a job.

Mr. Budgen: Of course, there is great conspiracy among Law Officers. They all scratch each other's backs and try to enhance the dignity and importance of their office. But, as the hon. Gentleman will recall, the first Labour Government were brought down as a result of a great row over the Campbell case. Even in recent times very disagreeable allegations were made against Mr. Sam Silkin in relation to his attitude towards the Clay Cross councillors. The back-scratching was not very effective at that time. So the idea that all Attorneys-General are persons of the utmost political virginity in all circumstances is simply not borne out by history.

Mr. Heffer: I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman; I am just making the point that I am not too happy with the way things in government are going at the moment. I just hope that the Attorney-General and the other Law Officers, as perhaps they should have done on past occasions, will stand up to the Prime Minister of the day and say quite clearly, "So far as we are concerned, there is


going to be no going down that path." That is the only point I am making. It is just a slight caveat in relation to the point made by my right hon. Friend. I was not actually disagreeing; I just wondered what the position might be in the present situation. However, I am glad that this aspect of the matter has been brought out.
I agree with the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) that a Member of Parliament obviously has to be responsible. We all get documents through the post, and people come to see us. If we are intelligent, responsible Members of Parliament, we look at those documents closely and decide whether they are important and whether they contain anything significant concerning the national interest. If we think that the sender is a nut-case, we put the documents in the fire or in the bin.
But from time to time somebody will come along with a significant document. As the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. MacLennan) said, it may not be a civil servant, although I agree with my right hon. Friend that perhaps it would be. But it could be somebody else; the clause makes the point that it does not have to be a civil servant. However, somebody had been notified and, to that extent, was responsible. Such a person might come to one with information, and one might well decide that it concerned a matter of the greatest national importance,.
I believe that a Member of Parliament should have that role. Who else? The suggestion that it should be a policeman is ludicrous. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman who made that suggestion lives. Will he go to his local police station and say, "I have this information. it is of the gravest importance, and I should like to speak to the chief constable"? He might get the reply, "I don't know about that."
Let us be serious about this matter. If something is of grave national importance surely the Member of Parliament has a responsibility to do something about it. I accept that there may be one or two Members of Parliament who wrongly use privilege in the House of Commons, but that is rare.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): One is enough.

Mr. Heffer: I am just giving an example. It may be that one or two Members have used privilege wrongly. In all my years in the House I have not seen it happen, although there may have been some things about which I have thought, "I would not have done that."

Mr. Maclennan: The Home Secretary has just said, "One is enough." Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one police constable misusing information that had been put in his hands would also be enough?

Mr. Heffer: That is absolutely right—I could not have put it better myself.
The fact is that most Members of Parliament—in fact, all that I have known—raise matters in this way only when they consider them to be matters about which the nation must know. It is that important. Certainly, I would never use the privilege of the House of Commons except in respect of a matter that the nation needed to know about and had a responsibility to act upon. I do not think that Members of Parliament use their responsibility—or their so-called responsibility—wrongly. If hon. Members have

proof to the contrary they have to argue that case, but in all the years I have been here I have not known Members to use privilege in that way.
The important point has already been made that we are the representatives of our constituents. We are not here as individuals. The people elect us. We are their voice. If someone comes to a Member of Parliament as a representative of the electorate and says, "I feel you should know about this matter," or, "I want you to act upon this in the interests of the nation," the hon. Member has not just a responsibility but a duty to do something about it. Therefore, that should be covered in the Bill.
Let us consider the point about going to a police officer or to the chief of police in relation to the civil servants who gave information to Churchill.. What would a police officer have done if he had got that information? The only way the information could have been used in the interests of the people was for Winston Churchill and his friends to act upon it. When we look back at history, we can only thank God that they did. Unfortunately, there were too many people ranged against them, so their action was not as effective as it might have been, but things would have been far worse if the information had not been passed to them and they had not used it. Anyone who took similar action now would be in real trouble under the provisions of the Bill. Members of Parliament should have the responsibility to act in similar circumstances.
In the Watergate case, the revelations were made to the press by civil servants around the President. We know how it happened. We have read the books and seen the films. Elected representatives should have had the opportunity to act on the information in the interests of the United States.
All Governments, including Labour Governments—despite my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) for whom I have a great affection—tend to use their power to keep things secret and to act against people who want to open matters up. I do not know why, because when I was a Minister I never found a secret worth bothering about. I do not know what people were on about when I was told, "Do not let the world know." What was I not to let the world know? I never knew any great secrets about anything.
For years I was classified by some organs of the press as an agent of Moscow because I was once a Young Communist. I used to joke that the worst thing that had ever happened to me was that when Stalin died, he stopped sending me a cheque regularly. I never got a cheque, but I am sure that the press thought I did.
Absolute nonsense is talked about secrecy. It is time we had a different discussion about how we can make things available to the people. The greater the lack of secrecy and the more people are involved, the more democracy there will be.

Mr. Dalyell: It is not so much that secrecy is about national security; it is often about political embarrassment. That is what causes the problem. A great deal of this problem has been about lying to the House of Commons rather than about national security.

Mr. Heffer: I could not agree more. As a Minister I regularly wrote a column for the Walton Times,. I had written it before I became a Minister. I also used to write a column for The Times, but I had to stop that. I continued to write a column for the Walton Times. I do not know the


circulation of the Walton Times, but it was not great. The Prime Minister of the day said that I had to stop writing that column. [Interruption.] It was not for literary reasons; he thought that I might embarrass the Government. I said in pleasant terms, "Thank you very much; get knotted," because I had no intention of stopping my column in the Walton Times.

Mr. Dalyell: Did the Walton Times have a circulation in part of Huyton constituency?

Mr. Heffer: No, it did not, but some people in Huyton might have read it. That was absurd; it was secrecy taken to the nth degree. On one occasion I got a notice from the Prime Minister that I should not appear in a television programme. Where did the notification come from? It came from Moscow because the Prime Minister was on a visit there. How the heck he knew that I was about to appear on a local television programme, I do not know. All this secrecy is absolute nonsense and it is time it stopped.
The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland may not have used the best words in his amendment, but the Government should agree that it raises an important point involving the vital role of a Member of Parliament. The Government should agree that Members should be the voice of the people and should be the recipients of information that people want raised publicly. If we cannot get the point about public interest into the Bill, at least hon. Members should be able to act in the public interest. Therefore, I ask the Secretary of State to note the arguments used in the debate and to bring forward on Report a suitable amendment covering the basic principles advocated by various hon. Members.

Mr. Hurd: It is always agreeable to hear the autobiography of the stormy youth of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer). This is the third time that I have heard it during these debates. I am sorry that, perhaps because of the pressure of the timetable motion on this rushed, hurried debate, he left out the next chapter about the clicking on his telephone. Perhaps we can hear that later, as it is very good stuff.

Mr. Heffer: It has stopped now.

Mr. Hurd: It is one of my worries that the hon. Gentleman has become respectable. I am afraid that he has produced evidence to that effect. I shall try to show later that inadvertently in part of what he said, he mortally wounded the case for the amendment.
As the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) said in his modest introduction, this is a modest amendment in that it does not cover Crown servants. It covers any other person and members of the public. Therefore, it does not attract the advantages that some of its supporters have argued for it. I will not dwell on that point, which is rather technical. The hon. Gentleman was making a different point about a different part of the public than that made by many of his supporters on the Conservative Benches.
This trenches on matters of privilege. That is why the Minister has to choose his words carefully. The Bill does not affect the operation or the present extent of

parliamentary privilege which has developed over many years; nor does it seek to add to it through the medium of primary legislation. It is not for the Executive or for Ministers at the Dispatch Box to tell the Committee the full extent and doctrine of parliamentary privilege, because these are ultimately matters for the House of Commons.
The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) rightly reminded the Committee of the Sandys case. He said that it led to an inquiry into the operation of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The report of the Select Committee was published in April 1939. It is worth making three short quotations from that report because they are germane. The report said:
Privilege enjoyed by either House of Parliament or by members of either House in their capacity as members can be abrogated only by express words in statute".
I think that we would all agree with that. There are no such words in the Bill. It continued:
Your Committee are of the opinion that disclosures by members in the course of debate or proceedings in Parliament cannot be made the subject of proceedings under the Official Secrets Act".
That is a statement of the extent of privilege and I do not think that anyone would disagree with it. The report concluded:
it would be inadvisable to attempt by legislation or otherwise to define with precision the extent of the immunity from prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts to which members of Parliament are or ought to be entitled.
I know that later committees have returned to the question of putting some definition of parliamentary privilege in statutory form, but that raises questions which are outside the Bill. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland and, in a more ambitious way, his supporters, seek to extend by statute the operation of parliamentary privilege, thus making lawful any disclosure of official information protected under the Bill by a member of the public to a Member of Parliament.
The matter was raised earlier this week when Mr. Speaker said in response to a point of order during the timetable debate on 13 February:
As the rules stand at present a communication from someone outside the House to an hon. Member is not privileged."—[Official Report, 13 February 1989; Vol. 147 col. 114.]
That is a statement by Mr. Speaker of the existing situation. The question is whether that existing situation should be changed.
In answer to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), the House should think long and deep before extending privilege not to hon. Members but to members of the public who might wish to communicate with them, and think about whether it wishes to provide by statute some privilege by which a member of the public might communicate with a Member of Parliament on a possibly criminal matter. I believe that the House should reflect deep and long before doing that.

Mr. Dalyell: I questioned Mr. Speaker on this matter and was told by the Clerk of the House that the distinction was between members of the public volunteering information and, for example, witnesses who had been called before a Select Committee and who were covered by privilege. Is there really a distinction between those who are called by a Select Committee as official witnesses and members of the public going to their own Member of Parliament? I think that that is a rather dangerous distinction.

Mr. Hurd: I think that it is a crucial distinction, because of the point that I have just made. In effect, the amendment is extending privilege in a way that would have implications and ramifications which the House would need to consider very carefully.

Mr. Gorst: Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that there will not be any narrowing of privilege in the sense that, if an hon. Member were to reveal on the Floor of the House something that was privileged and it were reported by the press, the newspaper reporting the matter would not be treated in any way differently from the way in which newspapers are treated in reporting our speeches today?

Mr. Hurd: There is no narrowing of privilege under the Bill. In one respect, which I shall mention, the position of individual members of the public is improved.
I shall now consider the matter from the other point of view that the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook mentioned—the view of the member of the public, or Crown servant.

Mr. Hattersley: I am beginning to understand the Home Secretary's debating technique. He told us that to allow the public to reveal such matters to Members of Parliament is a matter on which the House will want to think long and hard. We have thought hard for as long as the guillotine will allow, but we need to know the Home Secretary's view on the matter. We want to know not that it is a difficult problem, but whether he thinks it is appropriate. If it is not appropriate will he try and justify an assertion which up to now has been wholly unsubstantiated?

Mr. Hurd: I am coming on to my view about putting it into statute. What I have said up to now has been rehearsing the present situation in terms with which I do not think the right hon. Gentleman disagrees. However, it is important because Opposition Members have made claims that the Bill restricts parliamentary privilege. I have already established that it does not, but from the point of view of us all as Members of the House of Commons, the amendment lays down a completely new principle which I do not think can be dealt with within the confines of the Bill. It raises the point whether it would be sensible to extend privilege to members of the public communicating with Members of Parliament over matters which might be criminal. That is a major matter which goes beyond the confines of the Bill.
I now turn to members of the public or, although they are outside the terms of the amendment, Crown servants or members of the security and intelligence services. Members of the public who are covered by the amendment—people who are not Crown servants—would not in the majority of cases be affected by the amendment. It would have no effect on the ability of a person to consult his Member of Parliament about some piece of unauthorised official information which had come into his possession. In most cases, the information would not be protected by the Bill. Furthermore, in all but one of the areas that are protected by the Bill—that is warrants, which we shall discuss later—a disclosure by a member of the public is subject to a harm test, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) said, or in the case of crime, its equivalent, which means that it has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
It would be an offence for a member or former member of the security and intelligence services, or someone who is notified under clause 1—the general category with which the Committee is now familiar—to disclose information relating to security or intelligence to a Member of Parliament. That is the nub, not of the amendment, but of the argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook. Are we really saying on reflection that that would be a wise conclusion?
I now turn to the speech of the hon. Member for Walton. Any hon. Member—it does not have to be the relevant constituency Member—might well receive such information. The hon. Member for Walton has said that two or three hon. Members might abuse privilege, but I am not talking about abuse of privilege. An hon. Member, on receiving information, which might be of enormous sensitivity, from members or former members of the security or intelligence services, might, in the light of his own political convictions, decide to publish or to announce to the House what he had been told. The damage might be very substantial and would be fully protected by the privilege of the House.
The analogy with a police officer mentioned by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is wrong, as the police officer would not be protected while a Member of Parliament would be protected. When I said that it only needs one, I was simplifying the argument, but some Members of Parliament might feel, not as a matter of abuse but as a matter of political conviction, that it was their duty to read out what had been disclosed, in a manner fully protected by privilege. In that case, the damage would have been done. Does the Committee believe that it would be sensible to embody that risk in statute?

Mr. Maclennan: rose—

Mr. Winnick: rose—

Mr. Heffer: rose—

Mr. Hurd: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland who tabled the amendment.

Mr. Maclennan: I do not understand the Home Secretary's argument that a police constable would not be in the same position as a Member of Parliament. As I read the definition in the Bill, the police constable is a Crown servant and is covered under clause 7(3)(a). A police constable could take it into his head to act inappropriately, just as a Member of Parliament might. He is in pari materia.

Mr. Hurd: He is subject to discipline and under the law, whereas the Member of Parliament has the full protection of privilege, as long as he makes his disclosure not outside St. Stephen's entrance but on the Floor of the House or in a Select Committee. There is a basic difference.

6 pm

Mr. Heffer: If the individual goes to a police constable, he cannot say anything more about it. He certainly cannot go to the public. He can go to an hon. Member, but he cannot go outside. If he did, he would immediately be in trouble. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) said that, no matter how strongly an individual may feel, no matter how an hon. Member may


feel on receipt of the information, the information must not be disclosed. That means that the Government are saying that, for all time, no matter what the problem is or how seriously it might be against the national interest, it must never be disclosed and nothing is ever to be done about it. That is the most serious statement that any Government can make. It is like what has happened in the past in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and all the countries that the hon. Gentleman and I have opposed because they have kept from the public the real interest of the people.

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. I am coming to the rights of a Member of Parliament if he were to receive such information. I am still at the earlier stage. I am talking about the absolute duty, as set out in clause 1, of a former member of the intelligence and security services. The amendment would limit, restrict or remove that absolute duty in communicating with a Member of Parliament. It is right that that should not be permitted by statute, for the reason I have given. I simply believe—I am sure that the overwhelming number of our constituents would believe it—that that is not a sensible course to take. Therefore, I could not recommend it to the House.

Mr. Gorst: Is not the protection of free speech a matter for the House to decide? If there is a danger of abuse, is it not for the House to decide, and not for the Government to lay down the parameters in statute?

Mr. Hurd: That is one of the points that I have been making. The amendment suggests that, by statute, we should create the risk that I have described. I simply do not think that many people would regard that as a safe or sensible thing to do. My hon. Friend is right. Suppose we did take that risk and put it into statute, and an hon. Member does what I fear, and uses parliamentary proceedings to disclose something of great difficulty or danger. There might then be questions about privilege and about whether he had gone too far. I am not postulating an abuse of privilege; I am postulating somebody who, because of his genuine political convictions, felt that it was his duty as a Member of the House to disclose information.

Mr. Winnick: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hurd: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, and then I should like to answer other points.

Mr. Winnick: As the Home Secretary has just acknowledged—and the hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) made this point—if there is an abuse of parliamentary procedure, it is for the House to take any action that it considers necessary. The lurid picture which the Home Secretary is painting concerns alleged spies and someone reading out a list of their names on the Floor of the House. That will not happen every one, 10 or 15 years; every case in which abuse has occurred is far more likely to be a Cathy Massiter type of case. What she revealed confirms our view that if such abuses occur, they have nothing to do with foreign agents, spies or anything else, and they should be dealt with on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Hurd: I do not think that I have been at all lurid. I have made no accusations. I have been extremely careful in the words that I have chosen. I do not wish to be pushed

further into suggesting abuse of privilege, which the hon. Member for Walton himself suggested on a limited scale. I have made the point that I wanted to make—it is an important one. Honestly, it is a strange proposition before us, and it would be hard for our constituents to understand it.
To complete the argument, I refer to the civil servant—that is to say, a person who was not a member of the public in the terms of the amendment, and not a member of the security or intelligence services or notified. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West was quite right. A person in that category making unauthorised disclosures to a Member of Parliament may be committing a disciplinary offence. Whether he commits a criminal offence will depend on whether the disclosure satisfies the harm test in the Bill.
The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) has come up several times. It has also been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst). What is the position if a Member of Parliament receives such information? There is no offence of receipt of information in the Bill—everybody agrees with that—but there has been under earlier proposals. Quite a substantial change has been made. The Member of Parliament has not committed any offence by receiving the information. What he could do in the circumstances described would depend on the harm which he judged a disclosure by him was likely to cause. The options are wide. If he considered that any further disclosure would be likely to cause harm under the Bill, he could put the matter to the Secretary of State, under Clause 7(3)(a), or, if he was uncertain, he could seek authority to disclose it. He could behave in the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South evidently behaved in the case that he told us about.
The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook is right. We are not concerned so much with the position of the Member of Parliament, because that is safeguarded under a combination of the Bill and the existing extent of privilege. We are talking about the position of the member of the public and, in particular, a member of the security or intelligence services. I do not believe that it would be wise, from the purely parliamentary point of view, from the point of view of the extent of privilege, or from the point of view of the protection of necessary secrets against risk to accept the amendment or, rather, to accept the line of argument that the amendment begins and which my right hon. and hon. Friends have developed.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Will my right hon. Friend refer to evidence in court, the duty as contained under the statute, and the duty to give evidence?

Mr. Hurd: I am obliged for the reminder. It is a point that my hon. Friend has made.
If a person acting as a witness in legal proceedings is asked to disclose official information and he believes that to do so would be an offence under the Bill, he may explain to the court that he does not believe that he can give the information without committing an offence. It is then for the court to decide whether to require that the information be given. If criminal proceedings cannot be concluded without a disclosure of official information which is harmful, or more harmful than the offence which is the subject of the proceedings, then the prosecution may have


to be withdrawn. If a Crown servant is required by the court to give information, it is not an offence for him to do so, as it is obviously in accordance with his official duty.

Mr. Dalyell: The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) referred to the Scottish Law Society evidence. I listened carefully to the Home Secretary. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think that he has clarified the point. The Law Society of Scotland is concerned about
a disclosure by a Crown servant (or in certain cases, another notified person), as being with lawful authority, if it was made in accordance with his official duty. We are concerned that this would still leave cases of conflicting duties where the position of the person concerned would be unresolved.
To be fair, I do not think that the Home Secretary addressed this matter. It goes on:
If a Crown servant is giving evidence on oath, for example, and is asked in effect to disclose information covered by clause 1(1), he clearly has, in one sense, a duty to disclose but this cannot be called his official duty as such.
Incidentally, this was the result of a good deal of work by the officers of the Law Society and their working party. It goes on to state:
We do not comment as to which duty should prevail in such circumstances but believe that a clear resolution should be provided by statute for such a conflict.
I gave that statement to officials and I hope that the Home Secretary can clear it up.
The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) spoke about the Blunt case. This is not the occasion to go in detail into that case, but I am in a minority and believe that such minorities should be able to voice an opinion. I was horrified when the statement on Blunt was made. I was also horrified when the statement was made on Hollis. I was equally horrified when statements were made on Cavendish.
If Ministers are to make statements of that kind in Parliament, they had better be full statements. Frankly, Cavendish wrote his book, which caused so much difficulty, because he thought that the statement that was made was grossly unfair to a mutual friend of his, and of mine, and possibly of the Home Secretary's, the late Sir Morris Oldfield. It was the unfair treatment of Oldfield that caused Cavendish to write that book.
This is not the time or place to reminisce, but if statements were to be made on Blunt, the whole story should have been told because—I put it not higher than this—Douglas Sutherland was possibly in a position to know that Blunt acted in the way that he did partly because he was under the instructions and orders of the late Guy Liddell and the late Dick Brooman-White, who later became the MP for Rutherglen and who had been a senior officer in the intelligence services.
If statements of that kind are to be made, it behoves politicians to tell the full story, and therefore we must be extremely careful. I appreciate that we are under the guillotine, and although the Home Secretary does not have a lot of time, I hope that he will at least comment on the Law Society of Scotland point.

Mr. Gorst: I would have liked the Home Secretary to more specific when replying to my intervention in which I asked whether something revealed in the House and then reported by the press would in any circumstances attract the possibility of prosecution. I may not have heard my right hon. Friend correctly, but he did not seem to make a clear and emphatic statement on whether any change is likely to take place in that respect as a result of the Bill.
Will the Bill make any change in the position of a Member of the European Parliament, or will he remain in exactly the same position as he is now?
My next question arises out of the possibility of information of a classified nature being supplied to an hon. Member on an anonymous basis. This is not as fanciful as my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) implied. I recall a few years ago receiving an anonymous letter informing me that a considerable security risk attached to some people employed in the Palace of Westminster. I was inclined to treat the matter in the way that I treat all anonymous letters, but the terms in which it was couched and the information given was sufficiently specific to persuade me to pass it on to the authorities.
I heard nothing for about two months. Then an official of the House came to see me to assure me that the matter had been followed up. There had been a specific security risk, I was told, and the matter had been dealt with. I mention that case to show that occasionally—it may happen only once in a decade—the odd anonymous tip-off that an hon. Member receives—remembering that some members of the public feel that only their MPs are in a position to follow certain things up—must be followed up, or one takes the risk of something dangerous being ignored.
If information of an extremely sensitive nature is brought to one's attention, one draws it privately to the attention of the relevant Minister, or whoever else. One hears nothing and in due course one inquires whether anything has been done. Finally one is told, "We have looked into it. We think we know from where you got the information. We have dealt with it. The man is a nut." That is the end of the story.
One can be left with the feeling that that is not enough and that one should pursue the matter. As I say, this may happen only once in a decade—even once in a generation—and one is left feeling that something is being hidden. One is left wondering whether the tip-off, received anonymously, came from someone who has gone through all the procedures and feels that there has been a cover-up.
6.15 pm
What will happen in such a case if one becomes persistent? One may behave in the way in which tin. hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) behaved over the Belgrano affair. One may refuse to take no for an answer, and whether one is right or wrong is neither here nor there. One is persistent and, let us suppose, one is on to something. I want to be assured that there will he no question of making one a notified person so that one can never reveal exactly what one has discovered.
I believe that there is danger in this legislation of creating a new class of informants—not those who give their names but those who anonymously give information which one must then decide how to use, and if the cover-up continues despite one's inquiries, one may be forced eventually to reveal it on the Floor of the House. That bothers me about the part of the Bill with which we are dealing.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: I hope that the Home Secretary will speak again and answer various points that are being raised following his last remarks.
We have heard the expression "nut-case" used by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee to describe


people outside who might wish to raise with us matters that might not seem, as it were, to be quite normal. Hon. Members will agree that those are the very issues that we must watch carefully—the persistent people who raise matters that appear dodgy, stupid and vexatious. They are the very cases at which we look carefully because of the niggle at the back of our minds, "This must not slip through the net just in case there is the germ of some substance of a complaint." The idea that Ministers or others might say, "This is a nut-case; just ignore it; everyone knows about it and nobody has bothered to do anything about it," could be dangerous.
I have served in the House for only 15 years. I was about to say that I could not recall a certain action being taken by a Member of Parliament. I should refer to a Member of the House of Commons because, in the terms of the amendment, there is no such person as a Member of Parliament. The proposal is deficient because it would cover Members of the other place, whereas we are really speaking exclusively of Members of the House of Commons.
In any event, I have not known an hon. Member to use—not misuse—privilege in bad faith. That is the test. I have used it and subsequently I have apologised, but not in relation to an issue as significant as that which we are discussing. [Interruption.] I think that the Home Secretary said, from a sedentary position, "One is enough," and I agree that it would be enough if only one hon. Member used privilege in bad faith.
It could be argued that it is not possible for a Member of Parliament to abuse privilege. The question is whether privilege is used in good faith and as a last resort.
The Home Secretary, in responding to my right hon. Friend the member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) drew a distinction between the privilege that exists when a member of the public contacts a Member of the House of Commons, and that which exists when a member of the public is called to give evidence to a Select Committee. The right hon. Gentleman said that the witness before a Select Committee is participating as part and parcel of the proceedings of the House.
The Home Secretary also says that the amendment goes too wide. Today, unlike 10 years ago, there is a Select Committee covering every activity of Government—save the Scottish Office, for reasons that we understand. Given that an individual cannot send a letter addressed "To Parliament", because it would be opened and sent to the sender's constituency Member—which is something that the Home Secretary wishes to avoid—what would be wrong in that member of the public, who I accept is most likely to be a former civil servant, writing to the chair of, or the Clerk to, the relevant Select Committee? Such a communication would surely carry with it some privilege in respect of the person who sent it.
The Home Secretary will not think about my suggestion now, and will probably dismiss it. However, we have not yet reached the end of the Bill's passage through this House. I presume that there will be a Report stage, when amendments will be tabled. The Leader of the House indicated that that will be so, if there is time.

Mr. Hurd: Be relaxed.

Mr. Rooker: I am relaxed, but the Home Secretary is very relaxed because, as a result of the bad faith among members of the Government Front Bench, Ministers know that they are under no pressure to answer questions or to respond in debate. They are the most relaxed set of Ministers imaginable, because they enjoy the protection of the guillotine. Nevertheless, I ask the Home Secretary to give the matter further consideration before Report. It was the right hon. Gentleman who drew the distinction between an individual corresponding with a Member of Parliament and a witness before a Select Committee. I take that distinction one stage further, introducing the individual who discloses information to the Clerk to, or Chairman of, a Select Committee.
The hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) asked about the reporting of the House, and the Home Secretary was not as clear as he might have been in replying to that point. The right hon. Gentleman only has to say that there will be no changes from the present position, applying as we debate the Bill, when the Bill is enacted. I do not refer to future television or radio broadcasting, but to the existing provisions for the press and broadcasting authorities, which I trust will remain the same when the Bill becomes law. If the Home Secretary gives that reassurance, he will satisfy right hon. Members in all parts of the Committee.

Mr. Foot: I hope that the Home Secretary will consider the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), which relate to additional matters that Parliament should carefully consider. Since the Sandys case, the way in which the Select Committee on Privileges operates has been altered in a way that I thought provided for greater protection and should make the Government more willing to follow the course that some right hon. and hon. Members advocate. As matters stand, a right hon. or hon. Member cannot just raise a matter of privilege on the Floor of the House, but must first take the matter up with Mr. Speaker. So some further protection is given there.
From what the Home Secretary says, it appears that no alterations will be made to the operation of the Official Secrets Act 1911 as it applies to Members of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman gave reasons why he does not believe that there should be such an alteration. If that is the case, we are back to the Duncan Sandys position. The report of the Committee of Privileges on that case did not mark the end of the matter in the minds of those people who felt that they had suffered under the Official Secrets Act 1911—the Churchillites, the Duncan Sandysites and the rest. They still felt that the report of the Committee of Privileges was insufficient to deal with the situation, and that the legislation should be amended. That is what Churchill wrote about, and I have referred to that matter on two or three occasions. I invite the Home Secretary to read the words that Churchill wrote on that subject.
Thirty years later, when we propose making an alteration after all those years, the Home Secretary still says, "There is no real change to that aspect," for the reasons he gave. I am not arguing that amendment No. 74 is wholly satisfactory. I believe that the change required could be effected in a different way. But I also believe that, after all those years, after all the arguments and protests that have been made, and given the opportunity we have to devise a new secrets Act that will govern our country's affairs for many years to come, the Government should be


prepared to table an amendment that will guarantee to Members of Parliament, and to any person approaching a Member of Parliament, better protection than there has been in the past—and better protection than there will be if the Bill is allowed to go forward unamended.

The Attorney-General: Perhaps I may be allowed a brief outing, to avoid the perils of over-relaxation to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) referred.
As to the Scottish point and the disclosure of protected information in legal proceedings, the categories of protected information specified in clauses 1, 2 and 3 have a common feature: they all apply to a Crown servant who
makes a damaging disclosure of any information … which
is or has been in his possession by virtue of his position as such.
In other words, it will have been by virtue of his position that he came by the information in question. What will happen if that individual is called upon to divulge that information in court? He may say, "I do not believe that I ought to disclose that information." What will happen if he is pressed?
As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, if he is giving evidence for the prosecution—and it will virtually always be in those circumstances—the prosecution can say that, if he does not wish to give evidence and the court is not prepared to give an order, the proceedings will have to be withdrawn if the matter is crucial. But that seems to be so far-fetched as to be unlikely to occur. If matters had got to that stage, the prosecution would have considered it beforehand.
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If, on the other hand, the court orders that person to give evidence, he is surely giving evidence in accordance with his national duty, which is the formula found in clause 7, which sets out the circumstances in which disclosure for the purposes of this Bill is made with lawful authority. Of course, it is made then, I suggest, in accordance with his official duty because, if he is a civil servant, it must be in accordance with his official duty that he should comply with an order of a court made in connection with any information that has come to him by reason of his official position.
I believe that that is all that need be said to allay Scottish and other anxieties on this point.
I will give way to the temptation to answer one point made by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). He says that no change has been made by this Bill in the position of Members of Parliament vis-a-vis the Official Secrets Act 1911. I suggest that a very important change has been made: no longer will they be guilty of an offence of receiving protected information.

Mr. Hattersley: The Home Secretary having given the Committee his views on the amendment, perhaps I can briefly do the same.
I do not dismiss in any way the central point that the Home Secretary made. He was either too polite or too pusillanimous to put it in the crude terms that I shall employ, but, as I understand his case, his problem was that, if this amendment is carried, a member of the security services who provides information to a Member of Parliament does so with impunity. Then the Member of Parliament, acting properly in one sense under the rule of privilege, makes that information public in the House of

Commons and is not prosecuted for doing so. We do riot have to describe the situation which is the Home Secretary's fear to realise that there is a problem at least of a theoretical sort. But I cannot conceive of a Member of Parliament's making public the sort of information which the Home Secretary fears, or ought to fear, might be made public.
Let me explain what I mean by that. It is not based on any over-elaborate or over-romantic view of Members of Parliament; any such views as I might have had 25 years ago have been dispelled over the past quarter of a century. But I cannot imagine a Member of Parliament, say, being told the name and address of an agent in place and revealing that in the House of Commons. What a Member of Parliament might reveal in the House of Commons is information which is damaging not to the interest of the state but to the interest of the Government. Again, we come back to the nub of the question when we think about the sort of revelation that the Home Secretary fears.
The Ponting case has been an example in much of our debate. We have been told throughout the debate by the Home Secretary and others that for the aggrieved public servant there are proper channels of communication. I do not think that, despite the reference to this proviso, anyone was suggesting that Mr. Ponting would have been better advised to describe the situation to a policeman. Nor, since Mr. Ponting was correcting the international errors spread by the Ministry of Defence, could it have been in Mr. Ponting's best interests to report the matter to the Secretary of State for Defence. It is in that sort of situation, where the public service officer, the public servant, believes that he must report to a Member of Parliament, not because it is his wish to undermine the interest of the state but because he believes that the Government have acted improperly, that we believe that the revelation ought to be made to a Member of Parliament.
If the Government vote against this amendment, or at least if they vote against it without promising to put something technically more accomplished in its place, they are, in my judgment, ending what I would describe as the Winston Churchill situation before the second world war. It is a long time since I read Martin Gilbert, but the information that was supplied to Mr. Churchill and that he used with such success to end the days of appeasement and the pretence that we were prepared and were preparing was almost always supplied to him by men who, under the present Bill, would be classified under clause 1 or notified that they were in the special category requiring them to maintain confidentiality on all occasions. We are preventing that from ever happening again, or we are attempting to.
I make two points to qualify my own assertion. I think, as does the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), that in similar circumstances patriots would take the risk and still pass on the information. But we ought to be clear that, if this amendment is carried, we are legislating against the patriot doing what he thinks is his patriotic duty.
It may well be that the amendment is technically deficient in a number of ways. There is the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) about whether it refers just to the House of Commons or to both Houses. I think that it refers to both, but I shall not be so rash as to express my view concerning whether it should refer to our House alone or to the other


place as well. If this is a proper Committee stage—we still have the vestiges of a proper Committee stage, despite the guillotine—it is not enough for the Home Secretary to rest on the technicalities. If he believes, as we do, that it is right in the circumstances I have tried to describe for a public servant to be able to communicate information to a Member of Parliament, his clear duty is to promise a better amendment. Unless he does so, I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will vote for the amendment.

Mr. Maclennan: I listened carefully to what was clearly a very careful speech from the Home Secretary and I found it internally somewhat contradictory. He started by saying that this was a very modest amendment and ended by saying that it would not be understood by my constituents or his.

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is taking a little advantage of my generosity. I was answering not only his amendment, which is a modest one, but the much more ambitious propositions of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), which would encompass members of the intelligence and security forces, which of course his amendment does not.

Mr. Maclennan: I am grateful for that clarification, but it does not altogether dispose of the right hon. Gentleman's description of my amendment as one that would not be understood by our constituents. I believe that the opposite is the case: our constituents would find it utterly extraordinary if they thought that, if they came into possession of information of considerable significance, they could not, under the Bill, properly communicate it to the Member of Parliament.
The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) spoke of its being not very likely that my crofting constituents would reveal this sort of information. I have to tell him that there have been in my experience in the last 10 years two such cases. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) could testify to one of them because he was the Lord Privy Seal to whom I spoke at the time about the incident. I will tell the Home Secretary about these circumstances because they show the reality of the point with which we are dealing and illustrate the fact that this is not a theoretical problem.
I have in my constituency a nuclear research establishment at which plutonium is handled on site. It is a substance of great significance in defence and it seems to me that it is quite possible that, under the provision of this Bill dealing with defence—that is, clause 2(4), which speaks of the weapons, stores or other equipment and the production and operation of such equipment—the plutonium on site and the manner of the handling of it could conceivably be covered by this Bill.
A constituent of mine who was not a Crown servant or an employee on the site came to me and said that he had very important information to give me about the manner in which the plutonium was handled. He said that he had obtained the information from someone in the know and who worked on the site and that he wanted me to do something about it because it concerned an important question. If the Home Secretary is suggesting that the constituent would have been more sensible to take that

information to the village police constable rather than to me, as the Bill provides, then he is making a preposterous suggestion.
Let me give the right hon. Gentleman the other example that springs to my recollection. There was in my constituency an outstation of GCHQ, situated at Brora in Sutherland. In the early part of this decade it employed quite a large number of people in terms of the locality. Those who were employed there had always been entirely discreet about its operations. During the early 1980s, a constituent of mine who was not employed there came to me and said, "I believe that a decision will be taken to close this outstation of GCHQ. Of course that will have serious employment consequences in the community, but I would not come to you about that. I have come to you because I have been told that this is a grave error in the interests of the nation; this outstation of GCHQ is an essential part of our defensive network, and we cannot be properly looked after without it." He was not an employee. It was, perhaps, tittle-tattle. But he gave me to understand that he had been given chapter and verse.

Mr. Hattersley: Purported?

Mr. Maclennan: In the terms of the clause we are discussing, he had had disclosed to him very serious information from a Government contractor. If the Minister is suggesting that that worried constituent would have been satisfied by going to the local police constable with this information, then he is quite out of touch with reality. My constituent's response would almost certainly have been to go to the Scottish Sunday Post with the information, knowing that it would be broadcast very widely. In fact, my constituent came to me and I went to see the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham and the whole matter was properly discussed. My constituent's anxieties were alleviated to some extent.

Mr. Rooker: Did the outstation close? We are curious to know.

Mr. Maclennan: I do not wish to abuse the privilege of the House; indeed, I want to demonstrate the total propriety of hon. Members in handling these matters.
I give these anecdotes to show the Home Secretary what he does not seem to have appreciated—that these are not purely abstract matters, and that anyone who has been a Member of Parliament for as long as me has to deal with such matters from time to time. The Home Secretary has tried to reassure us that the Bill does not cut down a Member of Parliament's remedies if he should come into contact with such information. That may be so, but the Bill seems to cut down the remedies available to members of the public. That is worrying.
Section 7(3) allows for disclosure of information only in a particular way. Both of my examples are in the categories covered by the Bill, which are of disclosures to be made to a police constable or a Crown servant. That cannot be right; it simply does not make sense. The police constable is quite likely to make the wrong use of the information. Indeed, he might fail to satisfy the member of the public who is concerned about the issue that his concern is being properly dealt with. Perhaps the Home Secretary has greater faith that his constituents would be reassured by police constables in west Oxfordshire than I have that mine would be in Caithness and Sutherland. I am bound to say that this is not the appropriate way to proceed.
6.45 pm
The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook was quite right in saying that the amendment is not primarily about protecting Members of Parliament; it is about protecting the public. It may well he, despite this unsatisfactory clause, that the public will continue to communicate with their Members of Parliament as they think fit. Parliamentary privilege may well protect them, but I am not wholly convinced by the Home Secretary that the Bill does not cut down the scope of the privilege of a Member of Parliament.
The Bill is specific about the matter. Clause 7(3) describes disclosure by any person other than a Crown servant or Government contractor as a disclosure that cannot be made with lawful authority. Perhaps I should repeat that crucial point for clarification. The disclosure is not made with lawful authority if it is made to anyone other than a Crown servant or in accordance with an official authorisation. At its face value, that means that a disclosure is not made to a Member of Parliament with lawful authority, and that acts as a barrier to members of the public, and cuts down the capacity of a Member of Parliament to do his job properly.
I heard the Home Secretary quote from the Committee of Privileges and the Duncan Sandys case about proceedings relating to the Official Secrets Act. I tried to note the words, as 1 have not read them recently. They suggest that Members of Parliament should not be made subject to proceedings under the Official Secrets Act for disclosures of this kind. I was not entirely sure whether the Home Secretary was saying that that is still the case and the Bill does not affect that position. If he was saying that, he has gone some way to reassuring me about my main concern, which led me to table the amendment, but that is only an assertion, and it is not embodied in statute. It would certainly be much more satisfactory on a matter of such importance to have statutory clarity.
I wholly understand the Home Secretary's concerns about the possible abuse of position by a Member of Parliament, but we are concerned about balancing risks in such cases. The suggestion that Members of Parliament would be more likely to take the wrong decision than Crown servants or members of the public who are denied access by the law to their Members of Parliament is not capable of being sustained. The balance must be in favour of Members of Parliament exercising their judgment responsibly and with careful deliberation in the interests of the country. I hope that the Home Secretary will reconsider this question before the Bill receives Royal Assent.

Mr. Winnick: The only Back-Bench Member who has so far defended the Government's position is the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind). I shall not criticise him in any way, because he is rather a brave soul. Whether he feels that that is a quick way of getting into the Government, I would not know. However, I congratulate him on expressing what, after all, has been a minority viewpoint in the debate. We know that at 7.15 the troops will be out and the Government will get their way as usual, but in the meantime the minority view has been put by at least one hon. Member.
I heard rumours, and I did hope, that the Leader of the House would speak during the debate on a matter which involves parliamentary privilege. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is listening. I can well

understand his reluctance to speak, but at least he has been present. As you may know, Miss Boothroyd, when the Prime Minister was asked at Question Time today about the number of Cabinet Ministers who have been dismissed, she simply replied that none had been dismissed; they had resigned. Since the right hon. Gentleman is widely rumoured to be in the firing line, I can well understand his reluctance to speak.

The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. The hon. Gentleman should confine himself to the amendment.

Mr. Winnick: In the last resort, it is the right of a private citizen or an official to go to his Member of Parliament. The Home Secretary's argument all along has, in effect, been that, if a person has reason to feel that an abuse has taken place, there are procedures available to him. Clause 7 refers to disclosures from a Crown servant. We know that the Home Secretary has put a great deal of emphasis on the fact that, if someone in the security services feels aggrieved, he can go to the person widely referred to as the ombudsman in the Security Service.

Mr. Hurd: The staff counsellor.

Mr. Winnick: Yes. But what worries me, as I am sure it worries a number of other hon. Members, is that, if an official or a private person feels that going to a Crown servant, whether that be the village constable or a much more senior person in officialdom, will not resolve the matter, or, having used those procedures, he does not feel that the matter has been put right, there is no other course left. Surely, at the end of the day, such a person has the right of any other British citizen to go to his or her Member of Parliament.
The amendment may be technically defective in a number of ways, but that is not relevant. If the principle of an amendment is accepted, the Home Secretary should say so and table another amendment on Report. It is worrying that once again the Home Secretary has completely closed that door.
I remain convinced that there may be cases—I am sure that they would not be frequent—where at the end of the day, as in the Duncan Sandys or Winston Churchill cases, a Member of Parliament should be seen. Hon. Members know from their postbags that people have more mundane problems and difficulties than the sort that we are debating. Often they have tried to resolve them through the usual channels, but at the end of the day they go to their Member of Parliament. They do not say to themselves that their Member of Parliament has nothing to do with housing or health problems. They believe that their Member of Parliament is there to look after their interests. About 70 or 80 per cent. of our constituency postbags relates to matters which are no concern to us, but obviously we take up those matters because we are expected to do so. The same applies in the event of abuse.

Mr. Hind: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that his constituent can still come to him and make a disclosure, providing that he has not been notified, and the hon. Gentleman can take up the matter? Providing that he does so in such a way that he does no harm to the national interest, he protects the fact that the disclosure has been made to him and he seeks out a remedy. On top of that, the


has the privilege of the House should he feel that he needs to take the matter further. Should the matter then go to court, his consitituent can argue the defence in the courts.

Mr. Winnick: But the person who has made the complaint is not protected. A Member of Parliament would do his duty. Regardless of what is in the Bill, if I received a complaint I would not rush to the Home Secretary if I did not consider that to be appropriate. Obviously, if it were appropriate, I would go to the Government, but otherwise I would pursue the matter on the Floor of the House. I do not wish to engage in any form of abuse, but after consulting senior colleagues I would do what I considered to be my duty. I trust that all hon. Members would do precisely that. The person who makes the complaint should not be in the position in which the Bill places him. The principle of the amendment should be accepted.
Let me conclude with a case that I have brought up before which concerns an official, not a private citizen—that of Cathy Massiter. It arose before there was a staff counsellor. The staff counsellor was appointed following what happened over Cathy Massiter. Whatever else one may say about her disclosures, they have undoubtedly led to some changes for the security services.
If Miss Massiter had gone to a staff counsellor and had not received satisfaction, as presumably would have happened, and she had then gone to someone higher and at the end of the day the abuse about which she was complaining had continued, she may have gone to her Member of Parliament. Such a course would have been perfectly right. However, the Bill in no way protects a complainant such as Cathy Massiter.

The Attorney-General: indicated assent.

Mr. Winnick: It is unfortunate that once again the Home Secretary is not willing to accept the broad principle of the amendment. I do not accept that Members of Parliament abuse privilege. I have been here for less time than many other hon. Members, but I can recall few, if any, cases of abuse. We all know that the House has a way of dealing with abuse by taking such matters to the Committee of Privileges, as happens if a Member seeks to use the House for publicity purposes.
For all those reasons, the principle of the amendment should be accepted, although I am not at all surprised that the Home Secretary has again refused to accept it.

Mr. Dalyell: I thank the Attorney-General for coming to answer the Scottish point.

Mr. Hurd: Let me briefly answer some of the later points. I am not clear why the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) thinks that either of his constituents might be prosecuted under the Bill. He will judge that better, but if he is wrong, the problem that he described will not arise. The Bill does not reduce his or her constituents' rights in this matter.
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My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) pressed me on a point that I did not cover when I spoke earlier. I can say what I think he wants me to say, because it is true. There is no change in the press reporting of our proceedings. It will still be governed by qualified

privilege—a concept that has been thrashed out over the years. That means, of course, that if an hon. Member disclosed in the course of proceedings in the House a piece of information passed to him by a member of the security or intelligence services, it would be out—not just in the House, but on the news stands and in the television studios.
I tried to follow the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North about the receiving of anonymous information. He is right to say that there could be a problem, but I do not believe that it is one that would be affected by the Bill.
The suggestions by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) are matters for the House. I am not sure what the Clerk or the Chairman of the Select Committee would do when he received the piece of paper which the hon. Gentleman postulated. The House would need to think long and deep before going down that path.
The point of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) appeared to lack his usual logic. It is true that in some cases an hon. Member might not disclose what he had received, but that is not an argument in favour of an amendment which would enable every constituent to communicate, and therefore every hon. Member to disclose, any secrets which came into his hands. That would not be logical. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is right in saying that it is a matter of balance.
We have had a leisurely debate, with between 20 and 25 right hon. and hon. Members present for most of the time, with the usual—but rather reduced—gifted group of convinced critics of the Bill on both sides of the House. Those right hon. and hon. Members have not attracted the support which they obviously hoped for—[Interruption.] They have not persuaded me. It is not necessary to persuade a Minister, but a Minister can actually be made to do something. That means, however, attracting wider support than has been the case on this occasion. That does happen, but, of course, it has not happened on this occasion. That may be because the amendments tabled—especially this one—lack the sort of balance which I believe is better expressed in the Bill.

Mr. Norman Buchan: How many hon. Members who voted with the right hon. Gentleman throughout the proceedings on this Bill does he really think believe in this Bill? There is no answer.

Mr. Gorst: Would my right hon. Friend reply to the point about whether there is a change in the position of European Members of Parliament?

Mr. Hurd: There is no change in the Bill with regard to whatever privileges there are for Members of the European Parliament. In reply to a question from the hon. Member for Perry Barr last night, I promised to look into the subject of the European Parliament, official secrets and the clause which we discussed last night. I shall need a little time to investigate that point further.

Mr. Maclennan: I thank the Home Secretary for his remarks, which were, of course, unpersuasive. I shall simply comment on what the right hon. Gentleman said about the interest of the House in this matter.
The right hon. Gentleman signalled at an early stage in our proceedings that the Bill would not be amended by the Committee, except in one respect by a Government


amendment. He indicated that he had no intention of accepting any amendments tabled by right hon. or hon. Members on either side of the Committee, however eloquent or forceful their arguments were. It is not surprising, therefore, that many right hon. and hon. Members regard the proceedings through which he has been putting us as something of a charade. The reality is that we are not shaping the legislation in any meaningful sense. The Bill will leave the House as it entered it.
The right hon. Gentleman has participated in a procedure which, I believe, has brought the legislative process into disrepute. None the less, I regard this as an important matter, and I hope that right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House, while recognising the technical deficiencies of the drafting, will support the principle.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 112, Noes 274.

Division No. 98]
[7.4 pm


AYES


Aitken, Jonathan
Hoyle, Doug


Armstrong, Hilary
Hughes, John (Coventry NE)


Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Illsley, Eric


Ashton, Joe
Janner, Greville


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Barron, Kevin
Kennedy, Charles


Battle, John
Leighton, Ron


Beckett, Margaret
Lestor, Joan (Eccles)


Beith, A. J.
Livsey, Richard


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Loyden, Eddie


Bermingham, Gerald
McAvoy, Thomas


Boyes, Roland
McCartney, Ian


Bray, Dr Jeremy
McFall, John


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)


Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)
Maclennan, Robert


Buchan, Norman
McWilliam, John


Buckley, George J.
Madden, Max


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Marek, Dr John


Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)
Martlew, Eric


Campbell-Savours, D. N.
Maxton, John


Cartwright, John
Meacher, Michael


Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Meale, Alan


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Michael, Alun


Cohen, Harry
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l &amp; Bute)


Corbett, Robin
Morgan, Rhodri


Corbyn, Jeremy
Murphy, Paul


Crowther, Stan
Nellist, Dave


Cummings, John
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Dalyell, Tam
Pike, Peter L.


Darling, Alistair
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Prescott, John


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)
Radice, Giles


Dewar, Donald
Randall, Stuart


Dixon, Don
Richardson, Jo


Duffy, A. E. P.
Robinson, Geoffrey


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Rooker, Jeff


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth
Ruddock, Joan


Fatchett, Derek
Sedgemore, Brian


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


Flynn, Paul
Short, Clare


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Skinner, Dennis


Foster, Derek
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


George, Bruce
Smith, C. (Isl'ton &amp; F'bury)


Godman, Dr Norman A.
Snape, Peter


Golding, Mrs Llin
Soley, Clive


Gordon, Mildred
Spearing, Nigel


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Steel, Rt Hon David


Haynes, Frank
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Heffer, Eric S.
Vaz, Keith


Henderson, Doug
Wall, Pat


Hinchliffe, David
Walley, Joan


Hood, Jimmy
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


Howells, Geraint
Winnick, David





Wise, Mrs Audrey
Tellers for the Ayes:


Wray, Jimmy
Mr. Frank Cook and



Mr. Robert N. Wareing.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Forth, Eric


Alexander, Richard
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Amess, David
Fox, Sir Marcus


Amos, Alan
Franks, Cecil


Arbuthnot, James
Freeman, Roger


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
French, Douglas


Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)
Gale, Roger


Aspinwall, Jack
Gill, Christopher


Atkinson, David
Glyn, Dr Alan


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Baldry, Tony
Goodlad, Alastair


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles


Batiste, Spencer
Gorman, Mrs Teresa


Beggs, Roy
Gorst, John


Bellingham, Henry
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bendall, Vivian
Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)


Benyon, W.
Gregory, Conal


Bevan, David Gilroy
Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)


Blackburn, Dr John G.
Grist, Ian


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Ground, Patrick


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)


Boswell, Tim
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)
Hampson, Dr Keith


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Hanley, Jeremy


Bowis, John
Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')


Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes
Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Harris, David


Brazier, Julian
Haselhurst, Alan


Bright, Graham
Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney


Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)
Hayward, Robert


Browne, John (Winchester)
Heath, Rt Hon Edward


Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Buck, Sir Antony
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Budgen, Nicholas
Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)


Burns, Simon
Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)


Burt, Alistair
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Butcher, John
Hind, Kenneth


Butler, Chris
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Butterfill, John
Holt, Richard


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Howard, Michael


Carrington, Matthew
Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)


Carttiss, Michael
Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)


Cash, William
Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)


Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda
Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)


Chope, Christopher
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Colvin, Michael
Hunter, Andrew


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Irvine, Michael


Cope, Rt Hon John
Jack, Michael


Couchman, James
Janman, Tim


Cran, James
Jessel, Toby


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Jones, Robert B (Herts W)


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Key, Robert


Day, Stephen
King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)


Dickens, Geoffrey
King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)


Dicks, Terry
Kirkhope, Timothy


Dorrell, Stephen
Knapman, Roger


Dykes, Hugh
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Evennett, David
Knox, David


Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas
Lang, Ian


Fallon, Michael
Latham, Michael


Favell, Tony
Lawrence, Ivan


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)


Fishburn, John Dudley
Lightbown, David


Fookes, Dame Janet
l.illey, Peter


Forman, Nigel
Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)






Lord, Michael
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Luce, Rt Hon Richard
Shelton, Sir William


McCrindle, Robert
Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)


Macfarlane, Sir Neil
Shersby, Michael


MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)
Sims, Roger


Maclean, David
Skeet, Sir Trevor


McLoughlin, Patrick
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael
Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)


McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Madel, David
Speller, Tony


Major, Rt Hon John
Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)


Malins, Humfrey
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Maples, John
Squire, Robin


Marland, Paul
Stanbrook, Ivor


Marlow, Tony
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Steen, Anthony


Maude, Hon Francis
Stevens, Lewis


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stokes, Sir John


Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Sumberg, David


Miller, Sir Hal
Summerson, Hugo


Molyneaux, Rt Hon James
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Monro, Sir Hector
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Moore, Rt Hon John
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Moss, Malcolm
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Moynihan, Hon Colin
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Mudd, David
Temple-Morris, Peter


Nelson, Anthony
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Neubert, Michael
Thorne, Neil


Newton, Rt Hon Tony
Thurnham, Peter


Nicholls, Patrick
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Tracey, Richard


Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)
Tredinnick, David


Norris, Steve
Trippier, David


Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley
Trotter, Neville


Oppenheim, Phillip
Twinn, Dr Ian


Page, Richard
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Paice, James
Viggers, Peter


Patnick, Irvine
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Patten, John (Oxford W)
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Walden, George


Pawsey, James
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Waller, Gary


Porter, Barry (Wirral S)
Walters, Sir Dennis


Porter, David (Waveney)
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Portillo, Michael
Watts, John


Powell, William (Corby)
Wells, Bowen


Price, Sir David
Wheeler, John


Raffan, Keith
Whitney, Ray


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Widdecombe, Ann


Rathbone, Tim
Wiggin, Jerry


Redwood, John
Wilkinson, John


Riddick, Graham
Wilshire, David


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Rost, Peter
Winterton, Nicholas


Rowe, Andrew
Wood, Timothy


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Woodcock, Mike


Ryder, Richard
Yeo, Tim


Sackville, Hon Tom
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Sayeed, Jonathan



Scott, Nicholas
Tellers for the Noes:


Shaw, David (Dover)
Mr. Tony Durant and


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.

Question accordingly negatived.

It being after a quarter past Seven o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the order [13 February] and the resolution [15 February] , to put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that hour.

Clauses 7 and 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

INFORMATION RESULTING FROM UNAUTHORISED DISCLOSURES OR ENTRUSTED IN CONFIDENCE

Sir Ian Gilmour: I beg to move amendment No. 37, in page 5, line 26, at end insert—
'(2A) A person does not commit an offence under this section in respect of information which before the time of the alleged offence had become available to the public or a section of the public whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.'.

The Second Deputy Chairman: With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 2—Information previously available to the public—
'It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this Act to prove that before the time of the alleged offence the information was publicly known or published in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.'.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I move the amendment in a spirit of hope, but not in a spirit of great optimism in view of the nature of our proceedings so far in Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) got it seriously wrong in his speech on the guillotine motion on Monday. He said that the proceedings on the guillotine motion were purely ritualistic. He was wrong. The proceedings in this Committee are ritualistic. That is so partly because the Committee has been gagged by what I continue to think is a very iniquitous guillotine motion, but also because the occupants of the Government Front Bench are obviously unable to make any significant concessions. We are gagged and they are shackled. That makes the whole of our proceedings fairly pointless.
When my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House moved the guillotine motion he said that he thought that the Government had got their proposals right. Clearly he meant the word "right". However, I do not think that he meant the word "proposals", because they are not being treated as proposals. They are treated as something that is already law.
When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary stated with his customary courtesy that the Government were asking Parliament to do this, he did not mean what he said. The Government are telling Parliament what is going to happen. Therefore, I am not moving the amendment with great optimism. However, the other amendments that have been moved so far in Committee were designed to help the subject and the press. My amendment is quite different. It is designed to help the Government, so I hope that it may enjoy a better fate than the other amendments.
The amendment is designed to stop the Government making fools of themselves. All Conservative Members and possibly some Opposition Members will be in favour of it because of that. However, are the Government in favour of the amendment? We will soon find out.
As my hon. Friend the Minister of State will remember, there was a partial prior publication defence in the abortive Protection of Official Information Bill 1979. Why is there not one in this Bill? The only real reason must be that to include one would be an admission of error by the Government about what happened in the "Spycatcher" case. Clearly the prior publication defence was the nub of that case, and to include it in this Bill would be saying, "We got it wrong and we do not want to do so again." That is an understandable human reaction, but the "Spycatcher" case is a good reason for including a prior


publication defence because it would stop Governments ever again making quite such comprehensive fools of themselves. I shall return to the "Spycatcher" case later.
Another reason why the Government should accept the amendment is sheer common sense. I refer my hon. Friend the Minister of State to the title of the Bill—the Official Secrets Bill. If my hon. Friend the Minister considers carefully, I think he will agree that, once published, a secret is no longer a secret. It is like an egg—if I may use that word nowadays. Once an egg becomes a chicken it is no longer an egg. It is fairly clear that once something has been published there is absolutely no cause for the Government to become exercised about it.
Let us try to penetrate to some greater rationale for what the Government are doing. We can refer to the highest authority in this matter, namely my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who said on Second Reading:
there may he circumstances in which the timing and placing of a fresh publication is bound to cause harm which earlier publication had not. A front-page spread in a daily newspaper, for example, on an item previously carried in a technical journal in another country might cause serious further harm.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) pointed out that that went against what Mr. Justice Caulfield had said in the Sunday Telegraph case. My right hon. Friend went on:
It is a question of the harm done to the public interest. I should argue, on the ground of common sense, that it is perfectly possible to have partial, incomplete publication in a distant publication with no particular circulation and then to argue that to pick up that information, put it in a different form and splash it across the news, so causing major circulation would provide a further harm."—[Official Report, 21 December 1988; Vol. 144, c. 464.]
My right hon. Friend seems to think that Russian intelligence officers do not read technical journals, confining their attention to the British tabloid press. That seems extremely unlikely. The idea seems to be that our intelligence interests will not be damaged by articles that appear in the technical press. but will be damaged if rather less information—a characteristic of tabloid newspapers—is spread on the front pages.
We are trying to safeguard this country's secrets. We are not trying to safeguard the Government's face, or the intelligence service's face. Once information has been noted and is in the public domain—I have no knowledge of Russian or other secret services, but I imagine that they comb technical journals extremely carefully—

Mr. Budgen: I have the misfortune to disagree with my right hon. Friend on this issue. Is he not assuming that all foreign powers who may wish to gain secrets from our state are immensely efficient, wealthy and well informed? I know that he has a high Tory view of human nature and takes the general view that we are all idle, slothful and incompetent, so it seems uncharacteristic for him to believe that every foreign power reads every newspaper. Surely the basis of the libel law, which covers publication in all sorts of spheres and at all sorts of levels. is a much more reliable guide.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I do not regard my hon. Friend as idle or incompetent, and he is probably not slothful. He certainly has not been slothful in the Committee, but has been on his customary good form. I think that he is saying that while it is all right for information to be given to the Russians and the Chinese—he probably thinks that they are fairly competent—we should cash in on the fact that

some extremely incompetent south American country may not yet know the information, and conceal it from the British people on the off chance that, for example, the Venezuelans may not know either. If he thought more about that proposition, he might not wish to stick to it. The idea that the British people should be kept in ignorance on the off chance that some petty principality or minor republic has not read a technical journal is not one that the House should entertain.
The only conceivable, serious reason to vote against the amendment is to keep the British people in ignorance. For the sake of their amour proper or that of the intelligence service, the Government say that, although the Russians already know information because it has already been published in some American journal, it is important that it should not be known to the British people because they might object to it. Perhaps the Government might say to their allies, "You can see that it has not been published over here because we control our press better than you." I do not think that that is an emblem of skill.

Mr. Greg Knight: Is my right hon. Friend saying that he believes that there will never be circumstances in which a second or subsequent disclosure would cause harm? That seems a risky proposition

Sir Ian Gilmour: It does not seem risky to me. Such circumstances might exist, but there would be a greater risk in keeping the British people in ignorance while nearly all the rest of the world knew the information than in the one in a thousand chance that, once something is known to most of the world, further damage will be done by repeating it.
We have pretty high authority on prior publication because it was the basic issue in the "Spycatcher" case. Lord Bridge of Harwich, who is a high authority not only as a judge but as a former chairman of the Security Commission—we can hardly get better than him—said:
I can see nothing whatever, either in law or on the merits, to be said for the maintenance of a total ban on discussion in the press of this country of matters of undoubted public interest and concern which the rest of the world now knows all about and can discuss freely.
Lord Oliver of Aylmerton made the same point when he said:
To attempt, even temporarily, to create a sort of judicial cordon sanitaire against the infection from abroad of public comment and discussion is not only, as I believe, certain to be ineffective but involves taking the first steps upon a very perilous path.
Those two quotations sum tip the situation very well. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will break the habit, not of a lifetime, but of this Committee, and accept the amendment.

Mr. Robin Corbett: The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir. 1. Gilmour) put the argument in a nutshell with blinding simplicity. Once a secret is known, it is no longer a secret—it is as simple as that. This is a case where second thoughts are not best. Sometimes they are, but not in this case.
In 1979, the Government's published Bill accepted a partial prior publication defence. In other words, once the horse has bolted, there is little point in locking the stable door. In 1989, the Government say in paragraph 62 of the White Paper:


It seems to the Government that this rationale"—
that is, the argument in favour of prior publication—
is flawed.
It might have been more honest if the Home Secretary had said more plainly and honestly that the Government had changed their mind. There is nothing the matter with that, although I and other hon. Members may object to their new decision.
The White Paper, in defence of that, goes on to postulate an extraordinary situation. It says:
in certain circumstances a second or subsequent disclosure may be more harmful. For example, a newspaper story about a certain matter may carry little weight in the absence of firm evidence of its validity.
We now come to the astonishing part. The White Paper says:
confirmation of that story by, say, a senior official of the relevant Government Department would be very much more damaging.
Why on earth would even the deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Ingham, be authorised—as even he would have to be—to confirm such a story, touching as it would on vital interests of the United Kingdom? It is totally impossible to conceive of any circumstances in which any Government official would be authorised to make such a confirmatory statement. I do not believe that it would happen. In such circumstances, with information touching properly on our vital national interests, there is every good reason why such a story should not be commented on.
I can hear the Prime Minister now—either the present Prime Minister or my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock)—saying that it was not his or her practice to comment on matters of security and that they did not intend to do so. They would then sit down. However, the question remains. If a senior official is not authorised to confirm a story which, on first publication abroad, was known to be positively inaccurate, what possible harm can repetition do? I agree very much with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham. The bottom line seems to be no more than saving the Government's face and avoiding embarrassment.
The Government would know whether the story published abroad was true or not. If they chose not to reveal which, as the Home Secretary outlined in the White Paper, an official would be authorised to confirm it. That can be put in the White Paper only to mock. The White Paper becomes positively bizarre when it says:
Similarly, the publication of a list of addresses of persons in public life may capture the interest of terrorist groups much more readily than the same information scattered in disparate previous publications.
Perhaps the Minister will tell me whether it is the concept of a list that is at issue. Is it safe to publish a single name? The Home Secretary introduced the concept of that list. If a list is involved, how long is a list? The implication is that a list is longer than one particular name. How many names have to be on a list to justify the rejection of the prior publication defence?

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: I have been thinking about the matter as my hon. Friend has been speaking. Do the Government seriously consider that documents such as "Who's Who" and the telephone directory are capable of becoming the bibles of the terrorist world?

Mr. Corbett: Not even this Government would consider treating all those listed in "Who's Who" as a group and notifying them under the Bill.
Is the argument rejecting the prior publication defence concerned with the reprinting of a single specific name—and I shall give some examples in a moment—or with a group of specific names which is sensitive because of the jobs that the people concerned do? Let us consider an example. Suppose that The Baltimore Sun revealed that Mr. Colin McColl was the new head of MI6 and that The Guardian reported that in turn. What possible risk to Mr. McColl or MI6 can either the first or second publication cause? We have, after all, recently debated the Security Service Bill which admits, for the first time in statute, the existence of MI5 and MI6.
Quite properly, we know the name of the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland—although not yet the name of his successor—and it is published. We know the name of the General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland, the name of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the names of judges there. That seems to go against the Government's argument in the White Paper that, because of terrorists, it could be dangerous to publish some of those names. If that is so—and I understand the argument—I must ask the Home Secretary how many more sensitive jobs are carried out on behalf of this Government than the jobs of those senior people in Northern Ireland? If the Home Secretary seeks, through the Bill, to prevent the republication of the names of sensitive office holders, how have those names escaped clause 5? Either the Government are being carefully selective or, as I suspect, they want to be able to pick and choose under the Bill what shall be kept hidden from the British public, although it is known abroad.

Mr. Tony Marlow: Is there not another aspect? Some information is of value to the press, the media and in terms of writing books. If someone gets hold of information in this country which, if he published it, as the Bill now stands, would mean committing an offence, is that not a great incentive for him to rush off to some other country, publish it there and then come and stand before the media in this country and make a fortune?

Mr. Corbett: We are still left with the proposition of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, and we cannot get away from that. Once a secret is disclosed, it is no longer a secret. There could be an argument about damage—and I understand that—but by definition, such a secret is no longer a secret—[Interruption.] Perhaps I could be allowed to make my own speech.

Mr. Hurd: This is very helpful. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that if damage is proved, the prior publication defence should fall?

Mr. Corbett: No, I was saying that I understood the argument. I was trying to demonstrate the mess that the Government have got themselves into. I referrred to what is said in the White Paper about the publication of a list that could be useful for terrorist purposes, whereas the Government now do not seem to follow that practice with sensitive posts.

Mr. Ray Whitney: If the hon. Gentleman does not accept my right hon. Friend's proposition, is he saying that he does not want the harm test? Or is he saying


that, if harm is done, he is prepared to accept that? He must accept either my right hon. Friend's proposition or that one.

Mr. Budgen: rose—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. There should be only one intervention at a time.

Mr. Corbett: I am trying to demonstrate—perhaps I should have left this on one side—that what the Government seek to achieve in the Bill, in the context of the list quotation that I read from the White Paper, is something novel. It has never been done or attempted before.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: rose—

Mr. Corbett: I should like to continue for a moment. I shall see if I can demonstrate my point this way.

Mr. Budgen: rose—

Mr. Corbett: I must get on.
We know the names of those who head the CIA and the FBI in the United States and they are listed in the Washington telephone book. Earlier this year, The Daily Telegraph published the name of the new head of the KGB. No action was taken. The Moscow correspondent of The Daily Telegraph rejoices in the name of Ian Smiley, which is most appropriate. He told us—and no harm has been done to relations between this country and the Soviet Union—that the new boss of the KGB is General Vladimir Kryuchkov. Nothing has happened—[Interruption.] Hold on; I was just saying that nothing happened, so presumably we are allowed to know that.
It follows from what the Home Secretary argued in the White Paper that there are circumstances in which we would not be allowed to know about Mr. McColl being the head of MI6 or that last year the Prime Minister appointed Mr. Patrick Walker as head of MI5. Or perhaps it does not. The Home Secretary wants everyone to be certain of what risks they run, but the confusion remains.
On 4 January The Guardian published news of the appointment of Mr. Colin McColl as the head of MI6. On 23 January—in column 369 of Hansard—I asked the Attorney-General whether proceedings were to he instituted against Mr. Richard Norton-Taylor, the distinguished journalist on The Guardian and its editor, Mr. Peter Preston, for that publication. I got a one-word answer—"No." I take it that that matter is safe, but will such matters remain safe under the Bill? I assume that The Guardian picked the information up from the Washington Post.
Paragraph 14 of the White Paper properly refers o the need to ensure that no one is in any doubt as to the circumstances in which he would be liable to prosecution. The Home Secretary will know, of course, that there is immense uncertainty at the offices of The Guardian in Farringdon road as to whether it will be safe to publish such information in future.
Paragraph 63 of the White Paper says:
in cases in which the prosecution would under the Government's proposals have to show that disclosure was likely to result in harm, the offence would not be made out if no further harm was likely to arise from a second disclosure.
[HON. MEMBERS: "What is harm?"] Let us get this straight. At the start of the process, the Secretary of State for Defence, I suppose, takes advice on whether that second

publication has caused further harm. I assume that if he concludes that it has not, and if he has that advice confirmed by the Attorney-General, there will be no prosecution. Or are the Government saying that the matter is to be decided, not by the Attorney-General, but by the courts and that it is for the courts to determine whether harm has been caused by a second or subsequent publication and that, to that extent, what is proposed in the clause is a system of automatic prosecution?

Mr. Hurd: indicated dissent.

Mr. Corbett: The Home Secretary shakes his head, but I cannot believe that he is saying that he alone will decide whether or not a reprint has caused further harm. I cannot believe that even he will take that upon himself.

Mr. Hurd: I shall not be deciding anything. The whole point of the Bill is to remove such discretions from Government. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General explained—and as is normal—it will be for the prosecuting authorities to judge in the ordinary way whether the second disclosure has caused harm. If they believe that it has, a prosecution may result. The prosecution would then have to show that the second disclosure had caused harm under the different tests of harm in the Bill. The defence could then argue that it had not—that the first disclosure did but that the second did not. The hon. Gentleman has totally failed to prove that there are no circumstances whatever in which a second disclosure could do harm.

Mr. Corbett: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for that explanation. So, in judging whether to prosecute, the test is not whether a little or a middling amount or a lot of harm has resulted but whether any harm has resulted.

Mr. Gorst: The matter is clearer even than my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it. The first occasion when publication takes place and harm is done will be followed by the second occasion when harm may be done and it will be simply for the courts to decide which did the most harm. That must be perfectly clear.

Mr. Corbett: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
My point is that, when a report is seen in an overseas publication, editors and journalists in this country will be incapable of properly assessing whether further harm may or may not be done when they are deciding whether to publish an allegation in the public interest. Let me give an example—

Mr. Budgen: Does not the hon. Gentleman start from a misunderstanding of what constitutes a secret? A secret is a relationship. If he and I have a piece of information in common, it may be a secret between us. It will not cease to be a secret merely because he tells a third party; it will merely have been disclosed to another. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) said that a secret is like an egg—that when one cracks it, it ceases to be a whole egg, but that is a false analogy.

Mr. Corbett: With respect, I do not accept that.

Sir Ian Gilmour: A secret is not a relationship at all. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, it is something unknown or unrevealed.

Mr. Corbett: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that explanation.
Let me come back to my example. Suppose that the Washington Post ran a story saying that Britain had given secret undertakings to the United States Government not to use nuclear weapons based in Britain without the prior approval of the United States Government. Let us suppose that the report was based on an unauthorised leak by an official at the Ministry of Defence or the Washington embassy. Let us further suppose that a newspaper or television programme here wanted to run a story about it on the basis that it was a matter of public interest, whether true or not—I acknowledge that it would be of much more interest if it were true. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that it is not true and, improbably, that the Government put up a spokesman to deny the story. As I understand it, if the Government decide that even though the story is untrue and even though it has been published for the second time, it could still cause damage, those who published it here could be prosecuted.
Now let us suppose that the story is true and that the Government deny it. Suppose that, as in the case posited by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), there is a by-election pending and the disclosure is not convenient, so the Government deny that the information is true. That seems to suggest that prosecution could go ahead on the damage test. That must be so.
Under the Bill, no action can be taken if an unauthorised disclosure of our secret information is made by a foreign national abroad. But suppose that Sky television reported the hypothetical secret undertaking not to use nuclear weapons without prior American approval. What would happen then? The answer seems to be, "It depends." If the Sky satellite broadcast into x thousand British homes came as a report from the New York bureau, I think that no action could be taken, but if the Daily Express reported what it had heard on Sky television, the editor, Nick Lloyd, could be marched straight into Pentonville.

Mr. Rooker: After a trial.

Mr. Corbett: Of course, after a trial.
Let us suppose that Sky broadcast that report, not from its New York office but from London, up to the satellite and back down to the United Kingdom. In that case it would be caught, and so would the editor of any newspaper reporting that item. This is the stupidity of what the Government are proposing: the same information, the same disclosure, but the mere accident of a different office—one in New York, one in London—making all the difference between prosecution and no prosecution.
In fact, the position would be even more ludicrous, because x thousand people watching Sky television coming out of New York could quite properly have information, whereas millions not watching Sky would not be able to read about it in the Daily Express or see it on ITN later that night. The Home Secretary knows fine well—and this is another aspect of the ludicrousness of the situation—what Sky will do in those circumstances. Where is it going to broadcast that information from? London or New York? The Home Secretary knows fine well that Sky will ensure that such information always comes from New York so that the long arm of the Government cannot reach it.
There is something else that I hope the Home Secretary will be able to tell us about. I do not know whether this is a case of second publication, but it is close to it. What about all the imported world-class newspapers that come into Britain—Le Figaro, Le Monde, La Stampa, International Herald Tribune? They carry information which, under this Bill, it would be an offence to carry. Some of these publications even come in via one of these new-fangled mangles. What happens in those circumstances? Somebody idly buys La Stampa in a tobacconist's shop in Soho because he happens to enjoy reading that paper. Apparently he is all right, but if a British journalist from the Daily Mail or The Daily Telegraph picks up a copy of La Stampa and says, "Oh, that is an interesting story; I will offer it to my editor," the newspaper will not be able to publish it because that would be genuine republication.
Does the Home Secretary want to say something?

Mr. Hurd: indicated dissent.

Mr. Corbett: Fine.
This is a very serious matter for editors and journalists, and an extremely serious matter for the British people in regard to their right to access to proper information. How on earth are editors and journalists expected to assess the potential harm surrounding a story published elsewhere earlier, upon which no Government official has commented? I will give the Home Secretary the answer to that question. The Guild of British Newspaper Editors put it very succinctly when it said, "This is an impossible task." Unless the Government change their mind about this, it will inhibit publication of information not desperately vital to our national security, information which, in other circumstances, those newspapers might well have published.
Earlier in the debate, we reached the heights of farce when the Government argued that it might be all right to publish some of this information in a small magazine with limited circulation but not in the Daily Mail. Presumably the argument is that, because of cash limits in the Kremlin, there are restrictions on its ability to take out magazines. That was said earlier in this debate—or something very close to that. Are the Government still going to use that argument? Is the accident of circulation going to be among the measures of damage or potential damage? I say "accident" because, clearly, only a limited number of people are interested in aeroplanes, for example, and subscribe to Flight, against the millions who buy the Daily Mail. So I ask the Home Secretary yet again where in this is the certainty for editors and journalists.
The Government have not made out their case for changing their view of 10 years ago. They would lose nothing by changing their mind back and, perhaps, getting a little much-needed respect over this Bill. They would not lose anything, because the much-loved damage test would remain in the Bill even though the prior publication defence was admissible. I hope that, when the right hon. Gentleman has listened to the debate on this all-party amendment, he will come to the conclusion that the words used in 1979 were right and that those in this Bill are wrong.

Mr. Tony Baldry: The speech we have just heard was very revealing. We are now on the fourth day of the Committee stage, having had a Second Reading, yet even now it is quite clear that hon. Members on the


Opposition Front Bench have completely failed to master the Bill. Even at this stage the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) says that the Home Secretary will make the decision about prosecution. He has not grasped that, under clause 9, prosecution decisions will be a matter for the Attorney-General.
It is quite clear also—and I will expand on this in a second—that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have not grasped the provisions of clause 6(3). Perhaps the reason the hon. Gentleman was so keen to rush through his speech that he realised at last that he really had not grasped what the Bill was about. Or perhaps it was the realisation that there are now only five other Labour Members in the Chamber, despite his party's much-vaunted complaints about the guillotine.
I wish to make three points. First, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) was absolutely right in saying that this is an Official—official—Secrets Bill. It is concerned with official—information—official British information—and information that is not official falls, by definition, outside its parameters. Therefore it is quite untrue that this legislation would in any way prevent the publication, in this country, of information made publicly available by the Government of any other country. So, to start off, we are dealing with a limited amount of information; it is information that is official to this country.
We should also note that clause 6(3) explicitly states that no offence is committed, even if official information provided by us to another state, and then made available by that state under its own laws, is published. Under the Bill that is not an offence. Let me put it in simple terms: if the British Government make available to the American Government information that is then published under that country's freedom of information legislation, further publication of that information is not, and cannot be, an offence under clause 6(3).
Secondly, even when we are dealing with official information, in those categories of information where the harm test applies, the defendant can, of course, argue that the fact of any prior publication meant that damage had been caused by the first disclosure and that any subsequent publication of the information did not cause the harm specified in the Bill. That defence—the harm test—is already available to the defendant. It would be for the prosecution to prove damage, and it would be for the jury to decide.
Thirdly, having regard to the fact that we are dealing with official information and that the defence of the harm test exists already, it would be wrong in principle and in practice to have an absolute offence of prior publication. My right hon. Friend and those who support his amendment are saying that there should be an absolute defence of prior publication, that once the information is seen anywhere, that is a total defence.

Mr. Aitken: As my hon. Friend is learned in the law, I wonder if he could clarify one point in his argument in regard to the harm test. As I understand the Bill, the harm test does not apply to what might usually be called the absolute offences—those in the categories in clause 1, and some of those in clause 4 to do with interception, communication, and so on. If I am right about that, what is the relevance of the harm test? Surely it does not apply if an absolute offence has been created.

Mr. Baldry: My hon. Friend answers his own question. It has been made clear throughout the proceedings on the Bill, from Second Reading onwards, that there are certain provisions to which the harm test does not apply.

Mr. Hurd: If my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) reads clause 5(3) he will see that there is indeed a damage or a harm test for all offences in clauses 1 to 3. We are not talking now about what the former member of the intelligence or Security Service has done; we are talking about the actual disclosure.

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Mr. Baldry: The thrust of the point is that the harm test applies to most of the Bill. The vast majority of Government information has been taken out of the parameters of the Bill. We went through all that on Second Reading. The harm test applies to most of the information referred to in the Bill and a defendant could pray that in aid. Even where the harm test does not apply—where there is an absolute offence under clause 1—my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) should take into account clause 5(3), as my right hon. Friend said.
The absolute defence of prior publication does not exist in the law at the moment. It has never existed in the law of this land. If a defendant says, "No harm has been done by my revelation, because the harm was already done," that deals with cases such as "Spycatcher" which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham sought to ridicule. A defendant could pray that in aid before a jury. As my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) said, to argue for such a general defence one must assume that there could be no circumstances in which a second or subsequent disclosure could cause harm.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and other hon. Members who support the amendment might be so cavalier as to take that risk, but I—

Mr. Richard Shepherd: I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would give an example of the risk. Information that we give in confidence to foreign Governments may be leaked abroad by being published, for example, in Corriere della Sera. That point has been explored before. Therefore, the information is widely disseminated. Our courts have dealt with that. What example has my hon. Friend in mind of subsequent revelation which will cause as much harm as the original disclosure?

Mr. Baldry: My hon. Friend seeks to assert that there are no circumstances in which a subsequent or second disclosure could cause harm. I, and, I suspect, the vast majority of hon. Members, are not prepared to take that risk. It is an unnecessary risk, given the provisions of the Bill.

Mr. Whitney: May I offer to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) an example? We now know about Chevaline. The secret of Chevaline was kept from the British public and from the British Parliament by a small group in the Labour Cabinet. They kept it from the rest of the country because they did not wish the main part of the Labour party to know about it. There can be little doubt that the Soviet intelligence services knew about the decision on Chevaline. It would have been possible for the Soviet security services to leak that in a remote newspaper, and the information


would then have been picked up by a British newspaper. The effect would have been that the Labour Government would have turned tail and cancelled Chevaline, and that would have damaged British defence interests.

Mr. Baldry: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I do not think that those who support the Bill need to give examples. The burden of proof is on those who so cavalierly take the attitude that it is possible to take the risk of subsequent or further disclosure.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: There is no risk.

Mr. Baldry: My hon. Friend says that there is no risk. He must stand by that. Given the protection within the context of the legislation—the Attorney having to agree a prosecution, the defence of the harm test, the limited amount of information which is covered, and the fact that it has to be official information—there is no need for the nation to take the risk of subsequent disclosure causing harm. If those who support the amendment wish to be so cavalier, that is up to them, but I suspect that, when the Committee has to vote, it will decide that there is no need to be so cavalier with official information.
We have a fine balance in the Bill between the interests of a community and the proper rights of the citizen within it. The reason why those who support the amendment seek to create examples is that, throughout all the proceedings on the Bill, they have sought to put up artificial coconut shies so that they can try to knock them down. They have to look the people in the eye and say, "We are prepared to take a risk that there could never, in any circumstances, be a situation where the subsequent disclosure of official information could cause harm, and we are prepared to offer any defendant an absolute defence in all circumstances." That defence would be that, the information having been published elsewhere, the defendant could say, "There can be no prosecution in those circumstances because I could not have done any harm." I do not think that the Committee should be led down that lane.

Ms. Diane Abbott: We have had occasion over the past few days to contemplate the dangers of fundamentalist religion. I am obliged to contemplate the dangers of fundamentalist Government Back Benchers who claim that they have no need to prove their case. One does not need to be an expert on the security services or even on the affairs of the Home Office to know that, once a secret is revealed, it can no longer be a secret. When asked to demonstrate their case by giving examples, even the most loyal of Government Back Benchers were floundering.
It is common sense that a secret, once revealed, is no longer a secret. Therefore, why are the Government trying to push the defence of no prior publication? However much the Government may wriggle, and whatever byzantine examples they build, if we are to imagine circumstances in which a second publication causes harm when first publication did not, we have to imagine massed ranks of spies, enemy agents, criminals and journalists who are asleep, illiterate or drunk, or who are generally falling down on their duty.
I must speculate on why the Government are trying in the clause to promote a proposition which is patently

absurd. I can come up with only two reasons. One hates to go over painful history, but the first reason relates to the "Spycatcher" case, where the Government's case was largely smashed by the defence being able to demonstrate, by much painstaking work, that virtually everything in the disputed book had been published elsewhere by Mr. Chapman Pincher. All the Bill can be understood if we consider the past embarrassments of the Government. That is the whip that is flicking the poor Secretary of State on. That is the impetus to make sure that similar embarrassments do not happen again. It is because of what happened with prior publication in the "Spycatcher" case that the Government are trying to promote a transparent absurdity.
The second reason why the Government are trying to pass into law the transparent absurdity that a secret that has already been published is somehow still a secret is the notion, not of keeping our secrets from enemies of the public, spies or enemy agents, but of keeping secrets from the people themselves. It is a "them and us" notion. It is the notion that it is all right for insiders to know something, but it would be rather too embarrassing if the public at large knew about it.
Because the motivation behind the clause is not the public good but past Government embarrassment, and the "them and us" notion that, in some paternalistic sense, there are some things that insiders should know but the general public should not know, and because the attempts of Government Back Benchers to defend that absurdity have been so transparent. I speak in support of the amendments.

Mr. Hurd: It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I gave at this point the Government's reaction to the amendment.
When we spent a substantial time discussing the public interest defence, I felt that a major clash of well argued principles was involved. In this case, the loophole which has been opened by the amendment has not been justified by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour). I shall try to explain why.
The main principle which we are trying to adhere to in the Bill involves harm and whether disclosure was harmful. That principle runs through all our arguments, even when we argue that there is an absolute offence because all forms of disclosure in that category would be harmful. It is not a matter of great principle whether the information has been published before. The central issue is whether the disclosure was harmful. It may well be that in many cases, perhaps even in most cases, the question whether there has been prior publication is relevant in assessing harm. No one denies that. The question is whether it must always be the governing consideration, whatever other arguments might be produced about harm or likely harm.

Mr. Gorst: How does my right hon. Friend reconcile what he has just said with the provisions of article 10 of the European convention on human rights? After talking about
freedom of expression … regardless of frontiers",
there is a reservation in paragraph 2 which says:
The exercise of these freedoms … may be subject to such … conditions as are prescribed by law and are necessary".


If there is prior publication abroad, how will it be possible to say that the provision is necessary. Even if there is harm, that provision is not recognised by the article that I have quoted.

Mr. Hurd: We discussed article 10 yesterday, and the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland dealt with it. I shall come to the point as to why I believe that harm which could be caused by secondary publication could meet the criteria of harm in the Bill and therefore the criterion in article 10 of the European convention on human rights.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) mentioned the Sky channel. The hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension, as Sky is within the jurisdiction of this country and therefore within the scope of the Bill because of the uplink from the United Kingdom, although the satellite is Luxembourg-based. Therefore, the worries that he built upon that distinction do not exist.
I entirely accept what the hon. Gentleman said about The Guardian newspaper being in a muddle about that. In the nicest possible way, may I say that no other newspaper has been so consistently muddled and has so muddled its readers about the Bill. I do not understand why newspapers should be in a muddle about this point, because the assessment that they will make is exactly the same for publication or republication. If the criminal law is to apply, newspapers will have to think before publishing something which might fall within the scope of the criminal law. The problem will not be made any more difficult, because the tests of harm remain the same for publication or republication.
To return to the main point, which is extremely important, in many examples second publication would do no harm because, if there was any harm, it had been caused by the first publication. In the unlikely event that the prosecuting authorities decided to mount a case, the defence would argue precisely that: it would argue that no damage had been done. Moreover, the prosecution would have to prove that the defendant knew or had reasonable cause to know that such damage would be caused. That is a very high hurdle for a prosecution which was trying to show that, although something had been published elsewhere, there had been damage on secondary publication which met the test of harm.
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In clause 5, the test of harm is very high in those circumstances. There is no question of there being no prior publication defence. The question is whether that defence should be absolute and should sweep the board in all circumstances, and whether it should trump all other arguments before they are made. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) said, that puts an onus on the supporters of the amendment to justify so absolute a defence. We are saying that it should not be absolute and that it should be for the jury to decide in such cases.
I am sorry that I missed the first few minutes of the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham, but I listened to him carefully. He and the hon. Member for Erdington were deeply and delightfully out of date. My right hon. Friend was thinking solely in terms of the Soviet Union. That may have been realistic in the old days, and I do not wish to discuss whether the Soviet Union monitors or wishes to monitor every

publication so thoroughly and so immediately that no second publication could possibly cause harm. I shall not go into that, because it is not relevant to this argument.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) left the Chamber after making an extremely relevant point. We are not talking only of the Soviet Union and other super-powers; we are talking emphatically about a number of other Governments which, in one way or another, support state terrorism. There is no reason to suppose that they are equipped to read every publication and that they would automatically pick up anything useful to them from a first publication. Nor are we talking only about Governments. Here I drop the banter to stress a crucial point.
During the debate on the Security Service Bill, I mentioned the increasing effort of the security services devoted to counter-terrorist work. There are quite a few organisations—two or three in Northern Ireland and others in the middle east—which are quite sophisticated and probably attempt to piece together, bit by bit, disclosure by disclosure, how we counter their efforts in relation to techniques, equipment or personnel. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Erdington casts scorn on that, but it is not a comical matter. If there were a leak or a disclosure in some relatively obscure publication of something which was secret or important to counter-terrorism—the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) will take my point—there is no reason to suppose that the people who are trying to keep ahead of us and piece together how we deal with their activities would necessarily pick up that publication the first time.
Therefore, it should be open to the prosecution not to make any assumptions but to argue before a jury that the second publication had caused the harm. As I said, it will be a high hurdle that it will have to pass. It will have to prove not only that harm had been done but that those who published it knew that harm was likely to be done. They are two high hurdles. To say that that is wholly and on every occasion totally absurd, that that risk can be easily run and that there are no circumstances in which the fact of the first publication should not be an absolute and total defence seems to be a risky business.

Mr. Gorst: Surely the problem and, perhaps, the fallacy in my right hon. Friend's argument is that the prosecution will also have to prove that, on the first occasion, publication was not known to the people to whom it might have been damaging were it to be known by them.

Mr. Hurd: The onus will be on the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the second publication did harm of the kind defined in the Bill. As I said, that will be a difficult business. I am not saying that the prosecution will have an easy task. I am saying that it must be given the opportunity in such circumstances to deploy that case. It should not, regardless of any conceivable circumstances, be ruled out as a line of argument.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: This is clearly a most important point. There is a corresponding case. My right hon. Friend is effectively and reasonably putting an anxiety about some circumstances—not all—of a subsequent publication. Will he give hon. Members just one instance, so that we can see what is identified, of a subsequent publication that has been damaging or has been held up in the courts or anywhere? I just want one instance.

Mr. Hurd: I am giving instances not of past cases but of present dilemmas—[Interruption] I am not talking about hypotheses; I am giving a series of facts.

Mr. Shepherd: Not of past cases.

Mr. Hurd: I am speaking not of past cases, I agree, but of what is happening today. What has happened in the past four or five years, and what has certainly happened in the work of the Security Service, is a major concentration of effort on countering terrorists and the supporters of terrorists. My hon. Friend is right to take the matter seriously.
This example is important—other people may think of other examples—and it is a real example in the work of Government. I would not be happy if there were this loophole which, in all circumstances, would enable the prior publication defence to be absent. I do not think that would be safe. I refer to the point which my right hon. Friend made at the beginning of his remarks and which the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbott) developed in exaggerated terms.
It is not possible to regard the absence of an absolute prior publication defence as the result of an effort to avoid embarrassment or to keep British people in ignorance of something that other people know. We must consider the harm tests and the hurdle that the prosecution would have to surmount when faced by first publication. We should also consider the point in the Bill about which I reminded my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) and which covers all the offences listed in clauses 1 to 3. It is not plausible to argue that this is an attempt to keep people in the dark.

Mr. Shepherd: Part of what my right hon. Friend has been contending for has been recent history. I refer to the "Spycatcher" case and the investment of huge sums by the British Government to pursue right up to the House of Lords something that was previously published and available all around the world. One pressure is the sheer cost of the state prosecuting a newspaper for publishing something that had been published and previously available. Will the Home Secretary give me an instance of such a cost to society at large on the hypothesis that a subsequent revelation might be harmful? I can understand a first revelation being harmful, but I should like an instance of a second revelation being harmful.

Mr. Hurd: If this amendment were passed, that kind of instance would be more likely. The Committee must consider whether it is worth taking that risk. My hon. Friend mentioned the "Spycatcher" case. That involved the civil law—the search for injunctions. I think that my hon. Friend was satisfied by the ultimate judgment, but there was a great deal of speculation that we were proposing to put into the Bill matter that would alter the civil law on confidentiality. Contary to expectations, we did not do that. We, too, believe that we can live with the judgment in the civil case.
This is a matter of criminal law. It is a matter of deterring within the narrow field that we are talking about. It is a matter in which criminal sanctions might lie if deterrence failed. In the great majority of cases in which prosecutions might be tempted to prosecute, the presence of a first publication would create difficulties for them, which they would see that they were unlikely to surmount.

In cases in which they unwisely proceeded to prosecution on a second disclosure, the jury would simply be unconvinced that the second disclosure had caused harm.
There could be—it is right that the Committee should understand this point—a relatively small number of cases in which the prosecution should be able to argue that the second disclosure had done one or more of the harms specified in the Bill and that the person disclosing for the second time knew that that was likely to be the result. There might be few cases, but they could be serious and dangerous.

Mr. Maclennan: The Home Secretary is clearly floundering. He has failed to answer a question by several Conservative Members about whether there were any real circumstances in which the repetition of what is not any longer secret could be harmful. By his failure to address that question, he has made it abundantly plain that there is not any serious, or indeed any, risk.

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman lashes out at me. Having spent a bit of time on this matter now, does he say that no harm could be produced by the relevation in a major national newspaper of techniques in counter-terrorism which had previously been disclosed in a technical journal? Does he say that there is no possibility of serious harm resulting from that second disclosure?

Mr. Maclennan: By his riposte to my attack, the Home Secretary has demonstrated that he is trying to move the burden of proof from himself. He has been asked by several Conservative Members to give any instance he cares to choose of a situation in which the repetition of what is already public—that is, what is already not secret—could be damaging. Despite the fact that he has until 10 pm, and all hon. Members are ready to give way to him, he has not been able to show that the repetition of what is already in the public domain could be harmful.

Mr. Rooker: There is a difficulty. I accept some of the thoughts behind the Home Secretary's position. If he gave an example to satisfy hon. Members' questions, the immediate response would be for hon. Members to ask "Why did you not prosecute?" Only that kind of example would be meaningful, but, clearly, it will not come from the Home Secretary.

Mr. Maclennan: The Home Secretary's unwillingness or inability to give an example is a reflection of what is plain common sense—that what is already public cannot be secret. It is not only a matter of common sense but a matter of the meaning of language.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Maclennan: I will give way in due course, but I hope that hon. Members will allow me to develop my argument.
The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) put the case which has not yet been answered. When official information has been published, it is no longer secret and therefore it cannot in any real sense of the word need to be covered by the law.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Maclennan: I have not yet had an opportunity to develop my argument. I shall be willing to give way later.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg): The hon. Gentleman is making a bad case very slowly.

Mr. Maclennan: I am making it slowly because of the number of interventions.
I take seriously the Home Secretary's assertion that we must address the issue whether publication has caused harm. But this prior publication defence is intended to deal with issues where there is an absolute offence—for example, concerning information about the interception of communications or actions done under a warrant or by members of the intelligence or security services. These are absolute offences where there is no harm test.

Mr. Jeremy Hanley: rose—

Mr. Maclennan: No, I must be allowed to finish at least a few sentences.
There being no harm test involved, it seems clear that it is unreasonable not to recognise that if information of that kind—it is the "Spycatcher" situation—has been published, it should be open to journalists to repeat it.

Mr. Hanley: Would the hon. Gentleman seek to defend a person in a situation where it was impossible to prove that he had put information in an obscure journal merely so that he could subsequently publish in a broader arena, and in a situation where it was impossible to prove that he had leaked the information to the first obscure journal?

Mr. Maclennan: That point was ably dealt with by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, when he pointed out that, on the whole, spies are more inclined to read the technical journals than the columns of the Sun to get their information, and the damage will have been done by the first revelations.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: Sloppy thinking.

Mr. Maclennan: The Under-Secretary has come into the Committee late and has not heard any of the discussion on the amendment. If it is sloppy thinking, it is thinking that was espoused by the Conservative Government of which he was a member when they published the earlier measure. At no point during the debate has the Home Secretary attempted to explain why he has stood on his head, for that is what he has done. Although he has said, "We got it entirely wrong," he has not been prepared to give the reasoning why he has changed his mind.

Mr. Hurd: I have not changed my mind.

Mr. Maclennan: The right hon. Gentleman may not have changed his mind, but the Government have. The measure published in 1979 had a prior publication defence, as he knows.
A telling point was made in an intervention by the hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) about the virtual certainty that what is proposed runs foul of article 2.2 of the European convention on human rights. The refusal to allow prior publication to be regarded as a proper defence is plainly disproportionate. There can be no question but that if the matter came before the European Court—as it definitely would if it ever got before a British court in the first place—we should again be dragged back and have the Government's position struck down.
The Home Secretary said yesterday when I was dealing with the relevance of article 10 and the freedom of information guaranteed by the European convention that

he was prepared to consider the issue again and return to the matter at a later stage, having taken further advice. I hope that that is his intention, for if there is any part of the Bill which needs reconsideration, it is that applying to the republication of what is no longer secret. It must be ridiculous to make it a criminal offence to republish what is in the public domain.

Mr. Whitney: The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), like all other critics of the Bill, resolutely refuses to take on board the basic point that harm must be created. I do not know how often we need to repeat that. Unless additional harm can be proved, there can be no point in bringing a prosecution and one would not be brought.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) said, we are not living in a simple world of John Le Carré, of spying, of the Soviet Union and of dead letter boxes. It is a much more complicated world, one in which many other countries are potential enemies and involved in state terrorism. Indeed, the techniques used against the national interest go wide, into the sphere of political warfare and disinformation. It is against that much more complicated background that we must consider this legislation.
I offer the Committee a case history so that we may understand what we must legislate for in relation to disinformation techniques and the like. My example is manufactured in the sense that it was a manufactured piece of intelligence from the Soviet intelligence service. That much seems to be well documented. It could have been a piece of real hard intelligence, although I am sure it was not.
In mid-1983 the Soviet intelligence service started to create a story that AIDS was a phenomenon which had emerged from United States genetic engineering experiments in Fort Detrick in Maryland. It then sought to use the prior publication technique to sell that information around the world, and originally the Soviet magazine Liturnaya Gazeta quoted allegedly the Indian magazine Patriot as the original source of the story. Subsequently, Patriot denied that it was, but by that time the disinformation was on its way.
It ran around the world, so that by 26 October 1986 it was a front page story in the Sunday Express, a major coup for that paper here. A certain Professor Jacob Segal was billed as a French professor—he was in fact an East German—and the same story was retailed. It went a month later to a Spanish magazine and then to an Argentine magazine, and each time it was quoted as being an original source.
I offer that story to the Committee as a demonstration of a bogus piece of information, but a technique against which we must frame our legislation. It might have been a piece of real intelligence from British official sources.

Mr. Hugh Dykes: I am not only most grateful to my hon. Friend but astonished by the example that he gives, which disproves his own argument. Is he postulating that because a rubbish newspaper with a big circulation chooses to run a daft story based on disinformation or lies generated by the Soviet intelligence service, that story should be subject to the test of harm or of prior publication?

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Besides, what does that have to do with the Bill?

Mr. Dykes: My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) asks what it has to do with the Bill, which is an even more relevant question.

Mr. Whitney: The example that I gave relates to a spurious item of intelligence, but the Committee should consider the techniques that are used in the world of disinformation and prior publication.
For an example nearer home, I revert to the hypothetical case that I used when I intervened in the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry), which seemed to create some amusement among my hon. and right hon. Friends.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: I want to be helpful to my hon. Friend, but he is travelling over terrain that is not to his advantage. Yesterday, we had the benefit of the background to the Chevaline case, but it bore no relationship to the example that my hon. Friend gives. It does not serve the purpose that he has construed that it will serve, but serves that identified by the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) in his exposition of that story, as to the nature of maintaining a vital defence secret from society. The right hon. Gentleman made the point that classification was broken under authorisation by our then Secretary of State for Defence, Francis Pym.

Mr. Whitney: I am entirely aware of the point to which my hon. Friend refers. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen), who obviously cannot be with the Committee tonight, put a certain gloss on those events. It may be that he had a certain interest, given that he was so closely involved in them.
I ask my hon. Friend and the Committee to extend their imagination further. I well understand the role played by my noble Friend Lord Pym, but the situation then was different. The Conservative party and the British people as a whole understood—and still understand—the need to keep our Polaris submarines and nuclear missiles effective. The problem with the Labour Government's responsible leadership at that time was that they had grave doubts about the Labour party. I hope that my hon. Friend now better understands the example that I hypothesised.
In 1975 or 1976, the Soviet network was, one must assume, effective enough to understand the work on Chevaline that had been put in hand. That is not the issue. But how easy it would have been to use the Indian Patriot or some other external newspaper as the medium of primary publication, and then to run in Britain the great story that the Labour Government were embarking on the Chevaline programme. Would the Labour Government have had the courage to admit to that decision, or would they have caved in? None of us shall ever know. My assumption is that the Labour Government would have turned tail and fled from Chevaline, and that British defence interests would then have been harmed.

Ms. Abbott: I have listened carefully as the hon. Gentleman has given the Committee that example not once, but twice. I am clear that the second publication would have embarrassed the then Labour Government, but I am not clear why it would have materially affected British defence interests. Embarrassment is one thing, but matters of defence and national interest are another.

Mr. Whitney: It is safe to assume that the information in question would have been well in the hands of hostile intelligence services, and had it appeared in an obscure

magazine published in some remote African town, no harm would have been done. But if that report had been picked up by the British press, it would have argued, under the test of prior publication, that as the "Tanganyika Echo" had carried that story, it could do so. If it had done so, it is 99 to 100 per cent. certain that the then Labour Government would have turned tail on their decision to develop Chevaline. Consequently, British defence interests would have been harmed.

Sir Ian Gilmour: My hon. Friend's contention is that, had the provisions of the Bill been law at that time, the then Labour Government would have brought a prosecution against any newspaper that published such a report. Is he seriously suggesting that that example is relevant? My right hon. Friend's Bill may be illiberal, but I do not believe that it is as illiberal as that. Is my hon. Friend seriously suggesting that if a newspaper republished information that a Labour Government was spending money on updating nuclear weapons, they would have brought a prosecution?

Mr. Whitney: I was seriously suggesting that, in the circumstances that I hypothesised, the then Labour Government would have given their eye teeth for the protection given by the Bill, because then such a report could not have appeared in the British press. I refer to the deterrent effect of such a provision. I do not know what a former Labour Government might have done, but does my right hon. Friend agree that British defence interests could have been harmed? We are all citing hypothetical cases, and by definition are stretching to know what might happen in certain circumstances.
I offer the Committee another example.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: My hon. Friend's first example seems risible to me. Is he suggesting that a defence of second publication is unnecessary on the basis that a Government might stop what they were doing, and that that of itself must be against the national interest? That is a ludicrous line of argument.

Mr. Whitney: This is a more serious subject than my hon. Friend seems to allow. The record of a very few people in the last Labour Government keeping the Chevaline decision very secret is well known. The chances of that secret being known at the time would have been much greater without the defence of prior publication. I do not know what kind of secrets we might be talking about today, but it requires little imagination to bring the argument into the present and into the future, and to understand the defence of the national interest as opposed to a harm test that would have to be accepted by a court.

Mr. Edward Heath: Is my hon. Friend saying that if information of the kind he described was published in a technical journal overseas and then republished in this country by newspapers, and that as a result, CND supporters in the Opposition brought down a Labour Government, that would be treated as a case of harm?

Mr. Whitney: My right hon. Friend takes a more sanguine view than that to which his normal state of pessimism has accustomed us. He assumes that the Labour Government would have fallen. I hope that he is right. I agree that their chances of falling at the next general


election would have been high, but that might have been some time away, and we would have suffered four more years of harm under a Labour Government that had written off a sensible defence policy that my right hon. Friend had launched.
I give the Committee another example, which concerns publication of the name of a former head of MI6. These days, we are accustomed to such names being published, but in days before, that was not the case. Once that name was published in a German magazine in 1976, a British newspaper carried a photograph of the head of MI6 on its front page. That is dangerous. It exposed that individual to terrorist risk. That is another example of prior publication. Admittedly, and sadly, in that area, we have moved on.
This is the real world. This is not the simple world in which my right hon. Friends are able to make fun of these propositions. The serious proposition is that the harm must be proved. It is very difficult; it must be perfectly clear to a court. Therefore it is extraordinary, as has been said many times this evening, that those who criticise the Bill seem to think that there can be no case at all in which harm can be created. The reality, of course, is that it can be created.

Mr. Dalyell: Unlike the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), I do not think that the Home Secretary was floundering or bantering on this issue. If the House of Commons is to be responsible about this we have to take what the Home Secretary says about Governments extremely seriously. In fact, it is frivolous not to.
I say to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) that the Chevaline issue was very complicated. When I tried to rebuke Jim Callaghan when the first bombshell of Chevaline came, he replied very sweetly, as only a former Prime Minister can, "You didn't have the wit to ask me." Nor, indeed, did any of us. Secondly, technically, I am told, Chevaline was a very complex upgrading issue. It was not a new project and there was not an element of deceit. I am not at all sure that it was a good example, but I do not want to stray.
I want to put two questions to the Home Secretary. He intervened to respond to a point that was made much earlier by the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) about the repetition of information conveyed and covered by so-called absolute offences. The right hon. Gentleman referred, in replying to his hon. Friend, to clause 5(3). Could I ask him to confirm that clause 5(3) has nothing to do with absolute offences? It refers to offences under clauses 1 to 3, which contain harm tests. The absolute offences that we are talking about are in clause 4(3). Any and every repetition of this information is a fresh offence regardless of whether it causes harm and even if it is clear that no harm is done. The 20th or 30th repetition of information covered by clause 4(3)—that is, unauthorised phone tapping—is still an offence. Is this not a ludicrous situation?

Mr. Hurd: The absolute offence to which the Committee has given most attention—quite naturally, it took up most of our first day—is created under clause 1: that is, the offence for a member or former member of the security or intelligence services to make a disclosure which relates or purports to relate to security or intelligence. That offence, commonly called an absolute offence, is covered, as the hon. Gentleman will see, by clause 5(3),

which he quoted. He is perfectly correct to say that the other so-called absolute offence, which has to do with warrants legally issued, comes under clause 4 and is therefore not caught by clause 5(3). But the first one, revelations by members or former members of the security or intelligence services, is covered in the cases we are talking about.

Mr. Dalyell: I thank the Home Secretary for his courtesy.
On the question of Wright, which I think a lot of this is about, my opinion—I say nothing that I did not say on behalf of the national executive when I was asked at the Bournemouth conference—is that Wright was a fantasist. He was plain wrong on a whole list of things, for instance about Alistair Watson. I believed the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), when he said that it was quite untrue that Victor Rothschild introduced Wright to him when he was Prime Minister. That appears in the book, and there are all sorts of other inaccuracies. Everything that one has first-hand knowledge of seems to have been rather wide of the mark.
My question is this: in these circumstances why did the Government not shrug their collective shoulders, smile gently and let it sail by? What was the purpose of drawing such attention to this? One has one's suspicions, but they may not be for this debate, that it was to make a political point, which was very different from the ostensible reason.
I shall be supporting, I suppose—with all the reservations I have mentioned, because we take the Home Secretary's point very seriously—the spirit of the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), because of the sort of case that occurred in the Zircon affair. It may be within the recollection of the House that Zircon got great publicity, although when one looked at the film it was perhaps all a bit tame.
The serious point for the Committee is that in a magazine called Interspace there were far more useful technical details of the elevation of Skynet IV than appeared either in the film that Duncan Campbell made or in any sections of the press. In that technical magazine, edited by Roger Stanyard, there was information that was far more useful; and the February 1985 Newsletter, like every other Interspace publication, was on the mailing list of Intersputnik, the technical headquarters in Moscow. It really seems a bit absurd to make such a fuss about Zircon when the technical details were on the Soviet mailing list.

Mr. Corbett: Does my hon. Friend share my memory of the Zircon affair, that the Government's major objection was that the name of that project had become public and this would send yet another signal to the United States that the Government were unable to keep secrets?

Mr. Dalyell: I think that it was partly about the Americans and partly about another film in the series, which was politically embarrassing, called "Cabinet". In a sense it just proves that what is politically embarrassing is far more serious than national security.
I sit down with the reflection of Sir Frank Cooper, the former permanent secretary to the Ministry of Defence, who said that all this information was well known to every schoolchild in Milton Keynes.
In these circumstances I think we ought to take on board the general principles.

Mr. Whitney: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. During the Zircon affair, am I not right in my recollection that the Leader of the Opposition was invited to the Ministry of Defence on Privy Council terms and given a full briefing and came out acknowledging that a security breach had been committed?

Mr. Dalyell: I just leave it that I was not present at that meeting.

9 pm

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: I do not know why so many Members from all corners of the House—the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is an exception—are treating this very important issue of national security in quite such a cavalier fashion. I am not sure that it will do much for the regard with which this place is held in the country when people hear these debates.
I object to the amendments on two grounds. First, they might do harm to the future security of the state, and secondly, they would make it more difficult for an innocent person accused of an official secrets offence to be acquitted. I do not understand why Opposition Members think that either of those results is worth arguing for.
I also do not understand why the fact that a damaging disclosure has been made somewhere before should be a complete defence to a second publication, if that second publication is itself harmful. Of course, I have heard both Conservative and Labour Members say that once a secret is out it is no longer a secret, ha ha. But we are not playing with words; we are talking about harm to the national interest. I do not understand why my hon. Friends are arguing that if some damaging revelation reaches two people it might just as well reach 2 million people. There may be many circumstances where some things are damaging and they become more damaging the more people know about them.
I have heard some of my hon. Friends asking other hon. Members for examples. I can give some examples. If the news that some gold bullion is walled up in the Hammersmith flyover appears in the sort of publication that virtually nobody reads and then wide coverage is given in a national newspaper, so that all the criminals in London start hacking away at Hammersmith flyover to get the bullion out, surely the fact that more people know about that official secret—as it may be under clause 4, which covers crime—is more harmful?
Suppose that a nuclear aeroplane crashed somewhere in the Channel and somebody somewhere says "Well, I think it is just four miles off Calais and five miles down from a rock," and that is published in a publication. Perhaps it is just speculation, but then somebody else decides to publish it because it is a fascinating secret that would generate a lot of newspaper sales. An enormous amount of harm might be done to something, which it was vital should not be published in the national interest.
Perhaps somebody will give the name of a villain who is kept in custody at Winson Green prison. Perhaps at some time it would be easier to spring him from there than from some other prison. The more people who know that fact, the more likely it is that serious criminal offences will be committed.
One could go on. The point is that the more people who know something that is damaging and harmful, the more harm may be done. We are talking nonsense if we say that,

just because a fact has got out in one place, it can never cause more harm, however many times it is repeated to other people. That just goes against common sense.

Mr. Corbett: I must defend the integrity of the staff and governor of Winson Green prison, although that is by the by. Is the hon. and learned Gentleman really saying that those responsible for the management and conduct of our national press are all as irresponsible as he is making them out to be?

Mr. Lawrence: Sometimes—and that "sometimes" might do a lot of harm to the security of the nation. All I am saying is that it is wholly reasonable for prior publication to be an argument for not convicting someone where no harm is done by a second or subsequent publication, but it is wholly unreasonable to say that harm will never ever be done by a further publication. Those who have been advancing that argument are—I hope they will forgive me for being impertinent—talking nonsense.
What of the man who wanted to sell his official secrets to a publisher? It would make a mockery of the Bill if such a person could get round it by going to the United States, Australia, the Solomon Islands—I hope that no one will say that that is a terrible defamation of the Solomon Islands—or anywhere in the world and publishing, if, as a result of that publication, he could argue that, because the secret had been published elsewhere, that was a defence. He would be able not only to drive a coach and horses through the legislation, but completely to ignore it. I cannot believe that hon. Members want no Official Secrets Act. I simply do not understand why they seem to be agitating for the amendment.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: If an individual, whether a Crown servant or otherwise, publishes abroad in contravention of his duties under the Act, he commits an offence. No defence of prior publication protects him against that. If he comes back to Britain and is therefore in the jurisdiction, he will be prosecuted, and rightly so.

Mr. Lawrence: But we may not be able to prosecute him for an offence that he has committed abroad, if he stays outside the jurisdiction and there is no way of bringing him back to Britain for trial. That is precisely what happened with Peter Wright. Although he might have committed a criminal offence if what he had done had been committed in Britain, he could not be prosecuted for that criminal offence because he was outside the jurisdiction and there was no way to get him back into Britain to be prosecuted.
I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friend and for the courage and tenacity with which he has proceeded, but if he thinks that the point that he has just made is a good one, some may wonder whether all the points he has been making by way of intervention have been as good as he thinks they are.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor: I agree with almost everything that my hon. and learned Friend has said, but I hope that he will do justice to what my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has said. He appears to be saying that if the person who had committed an offence by publishing abroad came back to Britain he could be prosecuted, but not otherwise. Surely the same is true if he remained abroad and published here, so I do not think that that is a particularly good argument either.

Mr. Lawrence: The suggestion in the amendment is that there should be a defence if there is prior publication in the United Kingdom or elsewhere. If the prior publication had been in another country where there was no extradition, then, even though that prior publication was a criminal offence, the claim that prior publication is no protection when a criminal offence has been committed simply would not apply. A man who had released that publication in breach of our Official Secrets Act could not, in fact, be convicted if he was in a country from which there was no extradition. Therefore, no criminal offence would have been committed. As a result, the prior publication defence would be perfectly usable if we gave one.
I am saying that a coach and horses would be driven through the Bill, or it could be completely sidestepped, by somebody going abroad, committing a criminal offence by publishing something that is harmful to the state and then somebody here saying that there was prior publication. If the second publication causes no harm because all the world knows what was published in some other country, there will be no prosecution.
That brings me to the second heading. We talked about the same kind of thing when we dealt with the public interest defence. I do not understand why those who want to protect the honest whistleblower want to make it more difficult for him to be acquitted. Perhaps they do not follow the legal process. If the burden is on the prosecution to prove that harm has been caused and it is obvious that there has been no harm because there has been some prior publication, no prosecution may be initiated.
Let us suppose that the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions, or whoever makes these decisions, decides that he wants to prosecute because he believes that there is a chance that somebody will be convicted—which is not a good way of initiating prosecutions. If the prosecution is unable to discharge its burden of proving that harm is being caused because of the release of that information, the case will be stopped by the judge. Whether there is no prosecution in the first place or whether the case is stopped by the judge, those things will occur before the onus moves to the defendant to initiate a defence. By that time, he has been through the expensive process of having lawyers spending more time in court and he is running the risk that his defence might go wrong and a jury might disbelieve him.
I was howled down this afternoon because I dared to defend the independent Bar. However, in this case right hon. and hon. Members want to give more money to lawyers, want more prosecutions to be initiated, want longer trials and want to put more innocent people at risk. I do not understand that.
We have never had a defence of prior publication, because of the harm that it might do to the security of the state. It is not that it will certainly do so on tens of thousands of occasions, but that it might do so on some occasions. It is a sensible preventive device not to allow any more chance of harm to the national interest than is necessary.
I have heard no good reason why we should start now with the defence of prior publication, especially if it might mean more innocent people being placed at risk.

Mr. Heath: I wish to make three points. First, I say to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) that the reason why there has been considerable hilarity over some of the speeches this evening is that the

examples which have been cited of a possible offence have been ridiculous. My hon. and learned Friend, in his opening remarks, gave no examples which one could in any way relate to the serious matter of national security. That is why we were amused.
Secondly, a few years ago the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) intervened in a debate—he spoke as a former Secretary of State for Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer—to tell the House that the Chevaline question was decided by the 1970–74 Government. I have never disputed that. That makes the discussion tonight all the more irrelevant.

Mr. Whitney: rose—

Mr. Heath: Of course I shall give way. I know that my hon. Friend has a bee in his bonnet.

Mr. Whitney: I recognise that it was my right hon. Friend and his Government who took the first decision, and he very much deserves to be congratulated on it. Had the example that I suggested transpired and if, in the first 18 months of a Labour Government, they had faced the attack which would have been launched and they had cancelled Chevaline at that stage, does not my right hon. Friend feel that the national interest would have been harmed?

Mr. Heath: No. I do not accept either the proposition put forward by my hon. Friend or the one put forward by myself.
What happened was that Lord Wilson, as he now is, in 1964 fought the election on the abolition of nuclear weapons in this country, and was kept in power until 1970 by maintaining them. As he was Prime Minister at the time that my hon. Friend mentioned, he would have done exactly the same if anybody had put forward the sort of propositions which my hon. Friend has just mentioned. I have none of the anxieties of my hon. Friend, and I am sorry if they keep him awake at night.
The third question was the one raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton and one or two hon. Members previously. Why do we say that this amendment is desirable? I shall explain it as briefly as I can.
9.15 pm
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has gone to considerable lengths to show us how difficult it would be for the prosecution ever to bring a successful case in this matter. He has not been able to give any examples in which such a case could be brought, and he is an imaginative man. He writes excellent novels, but he cannot produce any convincing novel tonight. I accept that he has gone to great lengths to show that the hurdles which any prosecution would have to jump, to have any chance of success, are very high.
I accept that, so why am I worried about it? If the Bill remains as it is, the use of the threat of prosecution against the media in every form is not only undesirable; it is disastrous. The Government have only themselves to blame for these thoughts being in people's minds after 1 he lengths to which they were prepared to go over "Spycatcher", and after the events surrounding the BBC incident in Glasgow.
We have heard examples of the way in which news and information have been suppressed and we are forced to recognise that a Minister, the Attorney-General, the Home


Secretary or someone acting in the name of the Prime Minister may go to an editor, or to the chairman of the BBC or ITN, and say, "Look, this is in the Bill. We've heard that you've got hold of something which was published in a small column in a technical journal in Singapore, and you are now proposing to publish it. If you do, the prosecution will wade in. Think of what it's going to cost you to try to fight this off." That is the real danger, and it should not be allowed to exist in a parliamentary democracy.
We are now the most secretive country in the world, and that is not healthy. We have heard far too many examples of that technique being used against the media. It may well now be used against Members of Parliament and others who have information because they travel widely and read journals.
When I am asked why I believe that the amendment should be accepted and why, even though there is a slight risk of it happening, I am prepared to take that risk, the answer is that I believe that the greater danger comes from the use of the threat against the media and those who have the responsibility to keep the public informed and against the right that the British public has to be informed. That simply is the justification for dealing with the matter through the amendment.

Mr. Lawrence: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the ladies of the Burton Conservative Association hang upon his every word in this place? They were greatly disturbed when he quoted what I said in a debate on this Bill. He said:
No, let us get it away and let us get to bed. The only thing that concerns him"—
that is, me—

"is how early he can get to bed."—[Official Report, 13 February 1989; Vol. 147, C. 86.]
I hope that my right hon. Friend will be good enough to retract that quite scurrilous allegation or, more interestingly, give examples—or is he saying that what he said was in the public interest?

Mr. Heath: My hon. and learned Friend had better consult Hansard and he will see how he ended his address. I am sorry that the ladies in his constituency are worried about him. I should have thought that, using such phraseology, some of them might have been rather flattered. Perhaps he can explain why the gentlemen of Burton are not in the least worried about that.

Mr. Foot: It is a great delight to follow the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who is in such excellent form, and getting his troops off to bed as he used to when he was Chief Whip. He is doing so a little earlier tonight. It is dangerous for any Conservative Members to interrupt him, because they will be sent off 'without any chance of returning with a sufficient retort for quite a long time. They should be more cautious about the way they interrupt the right hon. Gentleman.
In one sense I differ from the right hon. Gentleman: I have more sympathy for the Home Secretary than he displayed. I shall return later to the more general points that he made.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) that it is absurd for any hon. Member to say that the case that the Home Secretary made to us tonight

was not serious. Of course it was. He argued it seriously, and although he could not give any specific examples when asked to do so, he described the modern circumstances in which such republication could be severely damaging.
It is no good any hon. Member contributing to this debate without admitting that the Home Secretary presented a serious argument to the House and the country. In some debates it is much more important to go for the strong parts of an opponent's argument than the weak ones—there are usually plenty of those. When I hear some of the right hon. Gentleman's supporters, I am reconverted 100 per cent. to the case against him. If we can only isolate the Home Secretary and his case from that embroidered by some of his supporters, we should try to answer it.
Although unable to give actual illustrations, the right hon. Gentleman was able to show that dangers could exist—particularly in the growth of terrorist affairs throughout the world. Nobody would dispute that those dangers are increasing year by year—almost month by month. I understand that there are circumstances in which it could be said that republication could place in the hands of terrorists in some countries information that they might not have received from the original publication. That part of the right hon. Gentleman's argument at any rate should be accepted, perhaps not as conclusive, but as one part of the general argument with which we must deal.
When we agree with the Home Secretary and admit that such cases exist and that he is trying to guard us and the rest of the country against peril, surely, in fairness—and particularly in the light of the previous discussions—the right hon. Gentleman should try to understand the other side of the argument. He has not really attempted to do so.
I speak as a journalist who, for quite a number of years, was the editor of a newspaper. It is a difficult job; people have to make up their minds on many matters in a short space of time. They have to make judgments, not necessarily in the same way as politicians, who may have a little longer. With newspapers going to press every day, journalists have to make up their minds quickly. I believe that the Home Secretary and the Government have a duty to consider the kind of problems that journalists face.
I am talking about only the most reputable newspapers. I do not care about the Sun and other such newspapers, which I do not regard as newspapers at all. Nobody needs to worry about them—although they are the newspapers that are fed through the corrupt machine to which the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup sometimes refers. I do not wish to disregard what he has said on that subject. Of course he is perfectly right to describe the relationship between the Government and the press generally—which is of serious consequence to the country—as corrupt, particularly in the way that information about terrorism is fed to newspapers.
What happened in the Gibraltar case was outrageous. The Home Secretary told us to look at terrorist examples. Yet a few days after the shooting in Gibraltar, what was fed out to the press by the Bernard Ingham machine and taken up by papers such as The Sunday Times was lies, for which they had to pay thousands of pounds in damages to people who had been maligned. Some of those libel actions were fed out from No. 10 Downing street—[Interruption.]—and it is no good for the Home Secretary to laugh.
We want to clean up these matters. It makes it more difficult for the House to deal with this question, with the terrorist question and with its dangers in the proper way


while we have that corrupt relationship between No. 10 Downing street and a great section of the press. The Government have come near to proving the case on that, because they have not had a word to say in answer to that charge. But in the light of the new terrorist dangers, in the light of the way in which those matters are now dealt with by No. 10 Downing street and elsewhere, and especially in the light of the way in which the best newspapers in the country—I leave out all the Murdoch lot—had to deal with the problem all through the "Spycatcher" affair, it is not satisfactory that the Home Secretary should take no account of the problems that they had to face.

Mr. Hurd: rose—

Mr. Foot: I shall give way in a moment.
The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer, three reputable newspapers, had to choose whether to risk prosecution. Newspapers do not like to be prosecuted because they are considered to be guilty of injuring the defence of the nation. All those newspapers had to take the decision whether to reprint matters that were widely published in other parts of the world. They were told that they would be committing an offence if they did so and would have to spend tens of thousands of pounds if they went ahead.

Mr. Hurd: I am grateful for the fair-minded comment at the beginning of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. I wonder whether we can strike a bargain. Can we agree that we do not have to choose between saying that prior publication can never be a defence and saying that it must always be an absolute defence? Can we meet in the middle and leave it to the jury?

Mr. Foot: I am grateful for the Home Secretary's intervention. I was going to come to my bargain, although I do not have the permission of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) who moved amendment No. 37, so I would have made it my own proposition. The Home Secretary has come to a proposed bargain before, but this is not a satisfactory bargain. The House must decide such matters. It is no good to say, "Leave it to the jury." What will be put to the jury? We know what judges have said. We do not always have to listen to them, but the judges said at the end of the "Spycatcher" affair, "We had better have some greater clarity about the law. The only people who can do that are the House of Commons and Parliament." That is what the judges should say when they find themselves in a hopeless mess and tangle, as they were at the end of the "Spycatcher" affair, and that is what they did say.
It is no good for the Home Secretary to say that we do not need to change the law, but should leave it to the jury to sort out afterwards. That is not satisfactory and does not meet the criticisms about prior publication that were made by the judges. At the end of the "Spycatcher" affair, the implication of most of the judgment was that there should be some changes in the law to prevent the British Government from going ahead with an appeal when they had a case that could not survive. The Government failed hopelessly. We must sort the matter out. It is no good to say that we should leave it to the jury. We must have a change in the law which makes the matter clearer.
If the Home Secretary really wants a bargain, he should consider amendment No. 37, which the right hon. Member

for Chesham and Amersham moved so excellently. Nobody who has listened to the debate can deny that there is a powerful case for the amendment.
9.30 pm
I do not think that the Home Secretary was putting up a fake case. I think that he was speaking from the point of view of what he considered to be necessity as a person who is partly in charge of dealing with the appalling problems of terrorism that we face in modern society. If the Government had the good will to do so, they could modify the amendment to satisfy both objectives and to give proper guidance to the jury. We could add the word "substantially" so that the provision read, "information which … had substantially become available". That would guard against the danger of the abstruse single matter which it was claimed would give the defence for the larger newspapers back here.
I am sure that the Government could come up with an amendment which would be satisfactory for their purpose but help the decent editors in this country—those who are trying to serve the public by providing them with news which, in the "Spycatcher" case, was available all over the world. What happened in that case was an absurdity of the first order, and I do not imagine that the Home Secretary would dream of defending it. The principal decent newspapers—I am excluding all the Murdoch lot—could not report, for the benefit of the people of this country, what was being read about all over the world. That is not tolerable, and it is not tolerable for the Home Secretary to come along and say, "I am very sorry. I cannot do anything about that. Compared with the other problems with which I have to deal, it is not very important." It is not good enough, after all this muddle, to say yet again that we must leave the jury to sort it out.
I plead with the Home Secretary yet again—as hon. Members have on other clauses of the Bill—to take the provision away and see whether he cannot find an alternative wording to ensure that, even if prepublication were not a defence in 100 per cent. of cases, it would be a defence in most cases. That would relieve decent editors, who have faced problems over the past year or so, of their difficulty. That would be good not only for the editors and their peace of mind, but for the health of free debate in this democracy of ours. If the Home Secretary believes in that free democracy—and I think he does—I hope that he will be prepared to reconsider the amendment, which is one of the most important that has been proposed in Committee.

Mr. Dykes: I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will respond to that invitation. There are those among us who have sympathy with the Home Secretary and appreciate the underlying importance of the clause. We have a natural preoccupation with the genuine security interests of the nation, the British public and our armed forces. I freely acknowledge that I am tempted in that direction. I was disappointed, therefore, when the Home Secretary intervened to give his reaction. With respect, I do not think that he dealt with the points of anxiety raised by hon. Members, especially Conservative Members who support my right hon. Friend's amendment.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) will not mind my saying this, as he knows that I have great respect for him and for his experience in these matters, but I think that his examples


added enormously to the Committee's confusion and that they were ill chosen. I was struck by the enigma that arises from his allusion to the mention in a German magazine of the MI5 chief. I believe that 70,000 people fly across the Atlantic every day. That sounds like an enormous number—something like 140 planes, each with 500 people on board. I imagine that about 5,000 people, mostly business people, come back from Germany to Britain each day. I could postulate that perhaps half of them, one way or another—either by speaking German or by having it drawn to their attention by somebody who spoke English, as a lot of people in Germany do—could come by this information. Half would be 2,500 people, and those people would then come back with the name of the head of MI5 and pass it on to friends at dinner parties. What would my right hon. Friend say in those circumstances? Would he say that too few people in Britain knew about this secret once they got back to Heathrow, or too many?

Mr. Whitney: My hon. Friend has given a figure of 2,500. I do not know the total readership of the Evening Standard—perhaps 1 million or 2 million—but what we are talking about is a risk growth of 2,500 to perhaps 1 or 2 million, and out of that number there might well be some crazy person who would say "If that man is the head of MI5 I will go and assassinate him." That is the danger. That is the public harm that is created.

Mr. Dykes: One always comes back to the conclusion that these things are being postulated—I refer to this clause without amendment—for the convenience of any given Administration, or its security branch, or the service chiefs, to prevent embarrassing things from being revealed, rather than for genuine, intrinsic national security. That is the conclusion one keeps coming to.

Mr. Hurd: That exchange between my two hon. Friends is interesting, because it is precisely the kind of exchange which, under the Bill, might take place between the prosecution and the defence. Is my hon. Friend so unhappy about his chances of success with that argument that he believes that he must win automatically without the case being heard at all? Why could the matter not be left to a jury?

Mr. Dykes: We are not dealing with espionage and the true breaches of security that are dealt with in part 1 of the Official Secrets Act. This is the ultimate absurdity of the "Spycatcher" example. I suppose that one could say there is a complete range, from the tiny little technical journal. I hope that my right hon. Friend was not suggesting that Literaturnaya Gazyeta was in that category, because, as it is a wide circulation newspaper in the Soviet Union, its editor would be most offended. I will not mention by name the tiny technical journals of the kind that I have in mind, because I might offend some trade association or other, but a tiny technical journal might publish something, and a newspaper with a large circulation might be the next publication to carry it.
Then at the other end of this range of absurdities—and most of the real-world examples will, of course, be within the range, is "Spycatcher". That is what most induces hon. Members in all parts of the House to insist on this amendment. At least I hope they will, unless we can get a further explanation or reaction from the Home Secretary

to the offer that has been made by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). However, I do not think that that will be forthcoming tonight.
Inevitably we come back to the conclusion that the Government—and this is an anxiety that journalists have expressed already—would rather threaten the press with something that would be embarrassing than provide for something that is a genuine aspect of national security. I do not think that the case for not amending this clause can be based on vague suppositions about the efficiency or inefficiency of foreign intelligence services. It is all far too conjectural.
Let me give another theoretical example—and I hope that no one will misunderstand me. Hon. Members in all parts of the House condemn the growth in world terrorism and, indeed, in state or quasi-state terrorism. I will not mention any real-world examples, because I do not want to offend hon. Members, but what if we were imbued with the idea of a just cause for terrorist acts? At the moment, I do not myself particularly see them, although one can sometimes go back to historical acts or mistakes in particular countries, producing a terrorist reaction. We condemn the act itself, even if not the underlying causes.
What if there were manifestly an overwhelming conviction that the cause was a just one and either a foreign Government or the British Government—in this case, we are considering only a British Government—decided that they had to suppress all information because it was embarrassing in the context of their own policies and had nothing to do with state security? I wonder also whether we are grappling with the notion of a high hurdle or with the notion of a low hurdle. Was "Spycatcher" a high hurdle for the Government because of the absurd result, or was it originally deemed to be a low hurdle, and is that why hundreds of thousands of pounds were expended—

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Millions.

Mr. Dykes: Yes, millions.
—and in the end we had a laughable result? Is that the reason for the endless farce so far as the true arguments about state security and the true protection of the public are concerned?
We have had absurd examples from the past of the security services rampaging round London making fools of themselves. I am sad to say that, by definition, those people are not always stable in character and behaviour; they are often fanatical and strange. The nature of the activity attracts people like that. Covering up such activity in the past does not protect the present security of the country.
The Americans and the French also have a reputation for secrecy, but it is now much less than ours. The obsession with secrecy has grown extraordinarily in recent years in this country. No theoretical examples were available to those defending the existing text of the Bill, nor could my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary produce a conjectural reason why the existing clause should be supported. I can understand why. I am not criticising him, because I can see the dilemma that he was in.
Because the public interest debate was turned down by the Government—a great opportunity lost—we have a tragic result. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) might accept


textual adjustments to the wording which he has felicitously presented to the Committee. Without the public interest defence, the amendment is even more necessary. I hope that that is the conclusion of the Committee.

Mr. Rooker: There has been a presumption throughout the debate that the first disclosure is a minor disclosure. There have been constant references to the small circulation of technical magazines. One can think of many examples. The first disclosure may not be minor but if there is not a prosecution, the disclosure may be repeated and there may then be an attempted prosecution. Does the person who publishes the story the second time know that all the harm that could have been done was done the first time? Because there was no prosecution the first time, even though there was a small circulation, the person might think that he could repeat the story.
We were told in the White Paper that by and large people should know whether they would be liable to prosecution. A publication with a big circulation is not necessarily wrong in repeating a story that first appeared in a small paper. Action might not have been taken the first time but might be taken the second time because someone decides that harm is done the second time. Some people may wonder why there was not a prosecution the first time. That point should be addressed by the Home Secretary.
If these proceedings were not being guillotined, and if we were conducting the sort of scrutiny which we would in Standing Committee, and which it is the duty of the Chair to see that we do, I would ask a question which arises from an intervention by the Home Secretary. In response to the Home Secretary, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) said that the MI5 person would not be covered because he would be dealt with by clause 1. Why is clause 5(6) in the Bill? I do not know. I should like an explanation. lf there is time for an explanation before the guillotine drops, we will be grateful, even though in asking the question I realise that I am out of order.

Mr. Aitken: The Committee has had a very good and reflective debate. Although I was not entirely convinced, the Home Secretary's speech deployed a case which needs a serious answer. Ultimately, the clause involves a very fine balance which must have been recognised by the Government, as in 1979, under Lord Whitelaw, their Official Secrets Bill contained a prior publication defence. Although Lord Whitelaw is no great softy when it comes to freedom of the press and libertarian instincts, he put in the prior publication defence and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary took it out. That demonstrates the fine distinction as to what is the right course.
It comes down to one question: in what sort of society do we want to live and have our freedom? My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) hit the nail on the head when he said that he felt that Britain today is the most secretive country in the free world. It has become so secret as a result of a large number of new pressures of which "Spycatcher" was perhaps the most spectacular example.
Of course my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is right to deploy the thesis that there could be some risk from second publication. I should have been more convinced had he been able to give a single example from his imagination or his knowledge; nevertheless, the

Committee should accept that possibility. However, one has to balance that risk against not whether we are prepared to take a risk, but whether we are prepared to have a law that will be an ass and ultimately will make the Government look silly. That is the area of choice.
Two different mentalities are involved. The Home Secretary, who sounded so reasonable, so sensible and so civilised, represents the Whitehall mentality. My right hon. Friend sprang from Whitehall and he still has more than a touch of the mandarin's mind in his politician's garments. That mandarin's mind really wants to keep the lid on as tight as possible. One can give numerous examples about how that mandarin's mind works. I remember vividly how Whitehall clamped D notices on British newspapers when George Blake was coming to trial. George Blake was a famous double agent. There was no question of anything being revealed by the British press which the Soviets did not already know. The Government were trying to suppress the truth from the people of Britain, not keep the lid on something that was a genuine security matter in respect of the Soviet Union.
I remember one moment during my own trial at the Old Bailey. A deputy secretary at the Foreign Office had some difficulty in explaining how the report on which the whole case turned could possibly be secret when every single fact had already been published. Perhaps the most embarrassing fact was that a Foreign Office official had actually written the report. In a rather memorable moment of cross-examination, the defence counsel asked the Foreign Office official if, when he gave a briefing on the report, he had to pretend that he was the hall porter or to wear a mask, since the only problem was that his identity had been revealed. The Foreign Office official paused for a long time before saying, "Well, it was very embarrassing, and embarrassment and security are not really two different things." That is the Whitehall mentality when it comes to suppressing information.
Let us suppose that we were in the United States and our debates were being televised. How staggered and stunned the American public would be to see a great democracy such as Great Britain solemnly arguing about imposing major suppressing devices and shackling the press and saying that if a secret has already been published it should be an offence for a second publication to take place. It would be totally against the United States Constitution, the Freedom of Information Act and the whole tradition of investigative journalism where reporters are not mere messenger boys, the lickspittles of the lobby, or the Ingham hallelujah chorus but real detectives of democracy. The whole ethos of American society is an open society.

Mr. Whitney: Before my hon. Friend leaves the subject of origins—he has referred to our right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his Whitehall origins—does he agree that his own distinguished journalistic origins might have coloured his attitudes? As we look at this difficult issue, which, as my hon. Friend has said, is extremely finely balanced, his instincts stem from a journalistic approach, just as my right hon. Friend's instincts stem from the interests of the state. We accept that there is a difference, but there is nothing wrong with that. If there is an allegation of bias, there may also be motes in other people's eyes.

Mr. Aitken: I cheerfully plead guilty to the mote in my eye and to believing in openness and in the freedom of the press. I am not ashamed of that, any more than my hon. Friend should be ashamed of some of his origins which are cloaked in mystery.
The amendment comes down to the kind of society that we want to live in. There is nothing wrong with the concept that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) wants to personalize—perhaps I do, too. On the one hand, we have the openness and journalists' mentality—let us not forget that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) was a most distinguished editor and newspaper owner in his day—and on the other hand we have the Whitehall mentality of the Treasury Bench.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said, the Whitehall mentality has become gravely tarnished in the past few years as a result of excessively authoritarian behaviour by the Government of the day. Let us look at the "Spycatcher" affair and the way in which the Gibraltar press matters were handled. I am talking not about security matters but about the briefings that were put out about the Gibraltar affair. The Government have unclean hands when it comes to freedom versus authoritarianism. The ghost of Peter Wright stalks through the pages of the Bill. There is the absurdity of going after another Peter Wright, and being able to clobber him and, above all, letting the threat of prosecution dangle like an unpleasant sword of Damocles over the head of every editor, so that they will face enormous costs if they dare to take a risk on a second publication.
It is nonsense to spend vast sums of public money trying to chase after a horse that has already bolted and to slam a stable door that cannot be sensibly closed, unless one is in the vindictive and authoritarian frame of mind that the Government got into in the "Spycatcher" affair.
I remind hon. Members of Jefferson's famous phrase. He said that if he had to choose between a Government without newspapers or newspapers without a Government, he would choose the latter. I would choose the Bill without this clause, because it is a threat to newspapers which are still a healthy influence in our society.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: It is a rare privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) on a theme that is central to the issue. We are concerned—I willingly support my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) and the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) and observe the points made by the former leader of my party—because the Bill is constructed in such a way as to reject any of the balances and contentions that a free society needs. It is allied to the Security Service Bill, which created several absolute offences. Even the construction of this Bill, with its absolute offences and low damage tests, creates a new offence in connection with publication.
Clause 6 prevents the repetition in the United Kingdom press of information leaked abroad by someone not subject to the Bill—for example, a foreign civil servant or an EEC official. We have pursued this matter, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary accepted it as far back as the White Paper. It was a narrow addition to the limitations on the press to publish, but it was a limitation. It is now graver and more serious. We have a portrayal of

the Government's increasingly authoritarian attitude to the press. It is a genuine worry, and it is why we support the contention behind the amendment.
By the Home Secretary's hypothesis, they are matters which concern us, and we appreciate the fineness of the judgment in this area, but it is clear that he has constructed a Bill which does not provide the balance that our democracy needs. The prime purpose of a free press is to preserve public control over the men and measures of Government, to use a well-known expression.
The Home Secretary did not give an example where the second publication could cause harm. This is the creation of a new publishing offence. A newspaper may not publish, without the possibility of prosecution, information that has been leaked in Belgium or in Italy or information given by the British Government to one of those Governments. If it is published in one of those countries and is then published again in this country—currently, that is not an offence—it may be an offence under the Bill. The Home Secretary has acknowledged that, yet it remains in the Bill. That must mean that he is creating a new offence, and I still do not understand the necessity to create a new offence against the press.
This is the Wright trial all over again. One of our judges said in that instance:
The Crown is only entitled to restrain the publication of intelligence information if such publication would be against the public interest"—
we agree with that—
as it normally will be if theretofore undisclosed. But if the matter sought to be published is no longer secret, there is unlikely to be any damage to the public interest.
I quote that from Lord Brightman. I will not speak at length because I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham wishes to address the Committee. The amendment is worthy of consideration.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I am surprised that the Home
Secretary did not use the most obvious example of damage that could be done the second time round, which was the action in the "Spycatcher" trial. That caused damage because it spread a great deal of knowledge—I do not know how much of it was right; clearly a great deal of it was wrong—around the world. That was perhaps the best example that could have been given, but it was not employed.
I was not joking when I was said to be cavalier by some of my hon. Friends, who are perhaps themselves in danger of being pompous. I said that the amendment was designed to help the Government rather than the people of the nation because it would prevent cases such as "Spycatcher", a case which did great damage to the Government and the intelligence service. That is a serious point because if damage is to be done—which is extremely unlikely, apart from in that case—it will be done by bringing the case.
It has been said that none of my hon. Friends has been able to produce a serious example of how damage could be done the second time round. The Home Secretary did not do that either, although after being interrupted by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) he made an effort to do so.

Mr. Hurd: I spent some time explaining—as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) acknowledged—how there was, in my view, quite a serious risk that,


from a second disclosure, states which supported state terrorism or terrorist organisations might learn information which they badly needed about techniques, equipment or personnel involved in the counter-terrorist effort. It is true that I could not produce an actual past case, but it is not true to say, as has been said repeatedly, that I did not adduce dangers that could happen, because I did.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I thought my right hon. Friend's explanation on that came after the interruption by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland, but I accept that it came earlier. I still do not see how that could happen. I cannot see how any newspaper in this country could behave in that way or how, if it did, it would be affected by the clause. To that extent, it is unreal.
However, we are aware that there are risks to the freedom of the press. It used to be thought that taking risks with the freedom of the press was just as bad as, or even worse than, taking risks with security. I do not believe that there is a risk, but if there is, it can be easily met by an amendment incorporating a provision dealing with counter-terrorism, which would stop the terroristic use of clause 5. It is clear that it could be used to intimidate the press, and that if left unamended clause 5 will intimidate and stop many things being published. It will mean the British press not learning things that the press of every other country will know.
If, on reflection, my right hon. Friend seriously believes that any newspaper would behave in the way that he described—

It being Ten o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the order [13 February] and the resolution [15 February], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 97, Noes 247.

Division No. 99]
[10 pm


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Fisher, Mark


Aitken, Jonathan
Flynn, Paul


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Battle, John
Foster, Derek


Beith, A. J.
Galloway, George


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
George, Bruce


Benyon, W.
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Bermingham, Gerald
Golding, Mrs Llin


Boateng, Paul
Gordon, Mildred


Boyes, Roland
Gorst, John


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Haynes, Frank


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
Heath, Rt Hon Edward


Buchan, Norman
Henderson, Doug


Buck, Sir Antony
Hinchliffe, David


Buckley, George J.
Holland, Stuart


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Hood, Jimmy


Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)
Howells, Geraint


Cartwright, John
Hughes, John (Coventry NE)


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Johnston, Sir Russell


Cohen, Harry
Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil


Corbett, Robin
Leighton, Ron


Crowther, Stan
Lestor, Joan (Eccles)


Dalyell, Tam
Livsey, Richard


Darling, Alistair
McAvoy, Thomas


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
McFall, John


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)
McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)


Dewar, Donald
Maclennan, Robert


Dixon, Don
McWilliam, John


Duffy, A. E. P.
Madden, Max


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Marek, Dr John


Dykes, Hugh
Martlew, Eric


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Meale, Alan





Michael, Alun
Soley, Clive


Murphy, Paul
Spearing, Nigel


Nellist, Dave
Steel, Rt Hon David


Pike, Peter L.
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Powell, Ray (Ogmore)
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Prescott, John
Vaz, Keith


Randall, Stuart
Wall, Pat


Richardson, Jo
Walley, Joan


Robinson, Geoffrey
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


Rooker, Jeff
Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)


Rost, Peter
Winnick, David


Ruddock, Joan
Wise, Mrs Audrey


Sedgemore, Brian
Wray, Jimmy


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)



Skinner, Dennis
Tellers for the Ayes:


Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)
Mr. Frank Cook and


Smith, C. (Isl'ton &amp; F'bury)
Mr. Robert N. Wareing.


Snape, Peter





NOES


Adley, Robert
Emery, Sir Peter


Alexander, Richard
Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)


Amess, David
Evennett, David


Amos, Alan
Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas


Arbuthnot, James
Fallon, Michael


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Favell, Tony


Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)
Fenner, Dame Peggy


Aspinwall, Jack
Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)


Atkinson, David
Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Fishburn, John Dudley


Baldry, Tony
Fookes, Dame Janet


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Beggs, Roy
Forth, Eric


Bellingham, Henry
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Bendall, Vivian
Fox, Sir Marcus


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Franks, Cecil


Bevan, David Gilroy
Freeman, Roger


Blackburn, Dr John G.
French, Douglas


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Gale, Roger


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Gill, Christopher


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Glyn, Dr Alan


Boswell, Tim
Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles


Bottomley, Peter
Gow, Ian


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)
Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)


Bowis, John
Gregory, Conal


Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes
Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)


Brazier, Julian
Ground, Patrick


Bright, Graham
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Browne, John (Winchester)
Hampson, Dr Keith


Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)
Hanley, Jeremy


Burns, Simon
Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')


Burt, Alistair
Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)


Butcher, John
Harris, David


Butler, Chris
Haselhurst, Alan


Butterfill, John
Hayward, Robert


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Carrington, Matthew
Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)


Carttiss, Michael
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Cash, William
Hind, Kenneth


Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Chope, Christopher
Holt, Richard


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Hordern, Sir Peter


Colvin, Michael
Howard, Michael


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)


Cope, Rt Hon John
Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)


Couchman, James
Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)


Cran, James
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Hunter, Andrew


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Day, Stephen
Irvine, Michael


Devlin, Tim
Jack, Michael


Dorrell, Stephen
Jackson, Robert


Eggar, Tim
Janman, Tim






Jessel, Toby
Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick


Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Jones, Robert B (Herts W)
Miller, Sir Hal


Key, Robert
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)
Monro, Sir Hector


Kirkhope, Timothy
Moore, Rt Hon John


Knapman, Roger
Moss, Malcolm


Knight, Greg (Derby North)
Moynihan, Hon Colin


Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)
Mudd, David


Knox, David
Nelson, Anthony


Lang, Ian
Neubert, Michael


Latham, Michael
Newton, Rt Hon Tony


Lawrence, Ivan
Nicholls, Patrick


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)
Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)


Lilley, Peter
Norris, Steve


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley


Lord, Michael
Oppenheim, Phillip


McCrindle, Robert
Paice, James


Macfarlane, Sir Neil
Patnick, Irvine


MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)
Patten, John (Oxford W)


Maclean, David
Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


McLoughlin, Patrick
Pawsey, James


McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)
Porter, David (Waveney)


Major, Rt Hon John
Portillo, Michael


Malins, Humfrey
Powell, William (Corby)


Maples, John
Price, Sir David


Marland, Paul
Raffan, Keith


Marlow, Tony
Raison, Rt Hon Timothy


Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Rathbone, Tim


Maude, Hon Francis
Redwood, John


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Riddick, Graham


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Ridsdale, Sir Julian





Rowe, Andrew
Thurnham, Peter


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Ryder, Richard
Tracey, Richard


Sackville, Hon Tom
Tredinnick, David


Sayeed, Jonathan
Trippier, David


Scott, Nicholas
Trotter, Neville


Shaw, David (Dover)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Viggers, Peter


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Shelton, Sir William
Waller, Gary


Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Sims, Roger
Watts, John


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Wells, Bowen


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Wheeler, John


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Whitney, Ray


Speller, Tony
Widdecombe, Ann


Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)
Wiggin, Jerry


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Wilkinson, John


Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John
Wilshire, David


Steen, Anthony
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Stevens, Lewis
Winterton, Nicholas


Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)
Wolfson, Mark


Stokes, Sir John
Wood, Timothy


Stradling Thomas, Sir John
Woodcock, Mike


Summerson, Hugo
Yeo, Tim


Tapsell, Sir Peter
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Taylor, Ian (Esher)



Taylor, John M (Solihull)
Tellers for the Noes:


Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman
Mr. Tony Durant and


Temple-Morris, Peter
Mr. David Lightbown.


Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Question accordingly negatived.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Cause 6

INFORMATION ENTRUSTED IN CONFIDENCE TO OTHER STATES OR INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS

Mr. Maclennan: I beg to move amendment No. 75, in page 6, line 4, leave out 'defence or international relations' and insert 'or defence'.in page 6, line 4, leave out 'defence or international relations' and insert 'or defence'.

The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Harold Walker): With this it will be convenient to consider amendment No. 76, in page 6, line 39, leave out 'defence and international relations' and insert 'and defence'.

Mr. Maclennan: The context of the amendments is the extraordinary provision of clause 6 whose purpose seems to be to make it a criminal offence to disclose British information relating to
security or intelligence, defence or international relations,
if that information has been leaked in another country; for that is what I think is meant by the phrase in the Bill
disclosed … without the authority of that State".
It is highly anomalous because the existence of the offence in British law does not result from a criminal act of leaking having occurred in another country. The disclosure may not have been criminal in that other country where it took place.
The effect of the clause is that a British citizen could be imprisoned in Britain for up to two years for repeating information that has been leaked abroad without infringing the local law in, for example, Brussels or Strasbourg. On the other hand, because the law is different in the United States, Canada or Australia, where there is a legal right to obtain information through a Freedom of Information Act so that disclosure is achieved not through leaking but by applying for the information, the British citizen is at liberty to repeat it.
10.15 pm
It is astonishing that a criminal offence in Britain should depend upon the state of the law in the country in which the information becomes available. It is bizarre that it should be a criminal offence to publish information leaked in Brussels but not if it has been obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in the United States. That is the highly anomalous effect of clause 6.
Whatever may be the virtues or follies of that, it is unacceptable that the categories of information leaked which lead to the imposition of a penalty of up to two years' imprisonment should yet again include that extremely vague reference to international relations.
Under clause 6(2) it is an offence to repeat information which has been supplied by Britain to another Government or an international body which has been improperly disclosed by someone who does not commit an offence under the Bill in so doing.
My purpose is to reduce the impact of that by deleting the words "international relations". The new offence applies to information specified as I have described, but the reference to international relations amounts to an extraordinary extension of the law because it applies to the repetition of information which may have been widely available abroad. However, I do not want to run the risk of repeating the arguments that we have just had on prior publication.
Whether that provision is justified is arguable. The Government have previously argued that it is necessary primarily to protect increasing international co-operation

in recent years on defence and international problems such as terrorism. But by including international relations the Bill has gone substantially beyond what the Government earlier sought to cover. It covers disclosures on any subject if they have been discussed by the Government, Government Departments or international bodies or their organs. The purpose of my amendment is reduce the ambit of this sweeping clause, which is anomalous and indefensible.

Mr. Terence L. Higgins: I intervene briefly. It is always difficult under a guillotine motion to know precisely where to raise some points, but this seems to be an appropriate point to raise a matter that is giving me some cause for concern.
It has been an underlying theme of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's arguments in support of the Bill that it is in many ways a liberalising measure in as much as much information that was previously caught by the old legislation will no longer be caught, even, it is sometimes stressed, the United Kingdom Budget.
There may be those who have some doubts about it, because, if a Budget leak takes place, it is possible that the Revenue could suffer substantial loss as a result, for example, of the change in the rate of excise duty on petrol, wine or cigarettes being known in advance. I accept, however, that it is the Home Secretary's general intention to widen the exemptions from the effect of secrets legislation as much as possible.
Having said that, I then begin to wonder whether the extent of this liberalisation is as great as we suppose. Let us suppose that there is some information within the economic management sector that is given in confidence to the OECD, which I presume must be an international organisation within the definition in the Bill. If that is then leaked in some way, or subsequently disclosed unlawfully, that would appear to give rise to the full impact of the criminal law falling upon the individual who publishes that information. If it was obtained directly and published, it would not be subject to criminal law, but if it was given to some other international body or other state and subsequently published, it would still be caught as it is under existing legislation. That appears to be rather strange and curious and I hope, therefore, that the Minister in his reply will be able to put my mind at rest.
The clause widens the matter considerably. I shall cite another matter which concerns me. A journalist from this country, who covers events in Europe, could obtain information from some international body—not necessarily the OECD, but perhaps the European Commission—and in good faith believe that that is something which is generally known in Strasbourg or Brussels and is, therefore, something that he could report back to a newspaper in this country for publication. It may turn out, however, to be something that was authorised either by the state or by the organisation concerned. It would then seem that the individual or the newspaper who had published that information in this country would be subject under criminal law to the sanctions imposed in the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend can clarify that point.
The final point that I would like to make at this stage—perhaps some others will emerge during the discussions, as they have previously—is that we are taking stringent measures, in many ways of an extraordinary kind, to protect the information which we give to international organisations or other states. I speak not only of whether


that information should be released, but of the argument that the mere disclosure may be harmful to our international relations, although the information itself turns out not to be so.
I ask the Minister how many other countries have such reciprocal legislation? Is it the case, for example, that the United States is equally concerned that, perhaps, if it gave us information in confidence, which was then subsequently published, that would damage its international relations? Does it have such legislation? If it does, we can take the matter from there. If it does not, one is bound to ask why we have to be much more sensitive than the United States on such issues. I would be grateful if the Minister could at least tell us the position of the United States and the main European Common Market countries in that regard. I hope that he can enlighten us on those points because the clause gives considerable cause for concern.

Mr. Dalyell: I want to ask one question. Most of the offences under this clause would presumably be committed by people in the Civil Service. If that is so, is there any truth in the suggestion that the Government are thinking of using the Civil Service discipline regulations to have some authority over civil servants in this respect with a view to cutting or curtailing pensions? Is there a threat to remove the pensions rights of a Civil Service leaker? I would of course like a categoric denial.

Mr. John Patten: I can deal with that now. Of course, the hon. Gentleman raises a very important point which is of concern to civil servants and to the Committee. Pension forfeiture provisions cannot be used as a disciplinary measure. They can apply only to people who are convicted of a criminal offence. The hon. Gentleman asked me to give a binding undertaking or a clear statement of the Government's position. We have no proposals at the moment to bring forward legislation to alter the existing public service pension forfeiture arrangements. I hope that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is satisfied with that undertaking.

Mr. Dalyell: That is a completely reasonable reply to my question.

Mr. Greg Knight: On a point of order, Mr. Walker. You are aware that on Monday there was much comment in the House from Opposition Members about the fact that the Government were being unreasonable in the allocation of time for discussing the clauses in the Bill. However, Conservative Members have noticed that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) has not been present in the Chamber since 7.15 this evening. Have we been allocated too much time and—

The Chairman of Ways and Means: Order. Let us not waste any more time.

Mr. Buchan: It might be out of order for me to mention the fact that the absence of any Conservative Members who support the Bill has been the most notable feature of our proceedings this week. The hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) must be the first Conservative Member to support the Bill. The problem facing the Government is not the absence of Opposition Members, but the fact that they are desperately trying to find Conservative Members to support the Bill.
I asked the Home Secretary only a few moments ago how many Conservative Members who voted for the Bill actually supported it. He did not reply. The answer was probably none. Anyone who has listened to five or 10 minutes of our debates on the Bill must have been convinced that it would be an utter tragedy for this country if it were passed. The Bill and the proceeding have been a travesty. For the hon. Member for Derby, North to appear suddenly with this kind of nonsense—

Mr. Greg Knight: I have been here all week.

Mr. Buchan: The hon. Gentleman certainly has not been here all week. I have been here all week apart from the past. three hours when I was discussing the city of Glasgow in 1990. If I had not been doing that, I would have been here discussing the position in Britain in 1989.
I am very concerned about this clause because we are not being given an opportunity, probably for the best of reasons I suspect, to debate amendment No. 60 which would leave out "be damaging" and change the wording to "would cause serious injury to the interests of the nation." I understand why we are not going to discuss amendment No 60. We have discussed that wording before and presumably it would be repetitive to discuss it in this part of the Bill. However, in many ways I would be less worried if that caveat were inserted. As it is, we are left with the situation where "international relations" is left unqualified and without significance and what is damaging to international relations becomes a crime.
Some of the most notable services to humanity have been performed by investigative journalists who have leaked information. For example, it might have reflected more honour on this country if, before the invasion of Suez, we had known a bit more about the international relationships then prevailing between Britain and France and the events in Egypt and Israel. This clause puts a blanket prevention or a cloud of anxiety on the good, intelligent and honest journalist whose job it is to find out what the hell is going on in "international relations".

Mr. Higgins: I note that the part of clause 6(4) that the amendment seeks to leave out refers to "international relations", which term is said to have
the same meaning as in section 1, 2 and 3 above",
which the hon. Gentleman mentioned a moment ago. That is very strange: we would have expected to find the definition of international relations not by reference to earlier clauses but in the definitions that appear in clause 13—which, of course, we shall not be able to discuss. Is this not an extraordinary piece of drafting? Perhaps the Minister will pick it up in his reply.

Mr. Buchan: I am sorry. I have been so absorbed in the lack of caveat in the "damage" provision that I did not notice that. It is indeed very strange—and dangerous too—that "international relations" should be inserted in such a form when clauses I and 2 deal with the "formation" of the Bill: security and intelligence, and then defence. Is this intended? It seems extraordinary that the term should have been left raw and unqualified if, in fact, it means "defence and security". I do not think that the Minister himself knows the answer, but it would be useful to hear an answer.
If "international relations" means "defence and security", we are in a different ball game, and it is time that


we were aware of it. I would not mind giving way now so that the Minister can tell us whether this was intended. Are we dealing with defence and security, or what? Until now we have assumed that we were dealing with the simple, straightforward issue of international relations.

Mr. Maclennan: Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman. We are considering two amendments. The first reference to "international relations" is in clause 6(1)(a)(i), which deals with
security or intelligence, defence or international relations
and to which amendment No. 75 relates. The second appears in subsection (4). The hon. Gentleman is quite right to have raised those questions.

Mr. Buchan: That forces us back to the terrible drafting of the Bill. Let us look at the word "or", for example. Subsection (4) refers to "security or intelligence" and "defence", but subsection 1(a)(i)—it sounds like a football pool, does it not?—refers to
security or intelligence, defence or international relations",
which has an entirely different significance. That, surely, means that "international relations" does not refer to intelligence, security or defence. We come back to the grammar of the Bill. Quite apart from its dangers, it has not even been drafted well.
I will sit down if the Minister can give me an answer. Does "international relations" mean "intelligence, defence and security", or does it mean what we normally mean by it—relationships between countries?

Mr. Maclennan: rose—

Mr. Buchan: If Conservative Members cannot solve their problems, we shall have to do it for them. It is their bloody Bill.

Mr. Maclennan: I hesitate to do the Minister's work for him—

Mr. Buchan: It looks as if the hon. Gentleman will have to.

Mr. Maclennan: May I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the definition in clause 3(5)? That describes
international relations as including
any matter relating to a State other than the United Kingdom…which is capable of affecting the relations of the United Kingdom with another State".
That is an all-embracing definition.

Mr. Buchan: Absolutely. Is the Minister going to try to be helpful, or not? I pause for a reply.

Mr. John Patten: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was taking us through bits of the Bill that he had read and other bits that he had not. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) is quite right: international relations are described on the face of the Bill, in lines 1 to 6 of clause 3(5). Clause 6(4) refers to the damage tests that are attracted to the offence, and the offence is described in clause 6(2).

Mr. Buchan: But, with respect, it does not say that. Clause 6(4) says:
For the purposes of this section"—
that is, the whole of clause 6—
'security or intelligence', 'defence' and 'international relations' have the same meaning as in section 1, 2 and 3 above".

The Minister is now pushing us on to sections 1, 2 and 3, which refer to security, defence and international relations, which is defined as being
between international organisations or between one or more States and one or more such organisations and includes any matter relating to a state".
In other words, the question of security or intelligence has nothing to do, in that case, with international relations. We are back to the simplistic definition after all.

Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman seems to have overlooked clause 6(1)(a):
any information, document or other article which—
(i) relates to security or intelligence, defence or international relations".

Mr. Buchan: On the contrary, I was making a specific point about clause 6(1)(a)(i) when I pointed out that the "or" could not by definition—if it meant anything at all—subsume international relations with security intelligence or defence. We now know that we are not dealing with security or defence—or at least I think that that is what the Minister is saying. We are dealing with it only as defined in clause 3(5):
the relations between Stares, between international organisations or between one or more States".
We are not, therefore, dealing with the matters with which the Official Secrets Bill purports to deal—that is, defence and security leaks. We are dealing with the investigation, commentary and publication of attitudes, relationships, manners and matters happening between states.
I gave an example—

Mr. Patten: Clause 6 applies, where:

"(a) any information, document or other article…

(i) relates to security or intelligence, defence or international relations".
If the hon. Gentleman reads through clause 6, he will see that it all flows.

Mr. Buchan: For the purpose of the debate, we are proceeding on the assumption the Minister is making that "international relations" means the definition in clause 3(5). That is right. I am merely pointing out the difficulties we then have in clause 6(4).
We are saying, therefore, that we are not dealing with the relationship of international relations, security aspects, defence and intelligence, but are giving the full meaning of the word to "or" and, therefore, isolating "international relations". [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I cannot conduct any more English lessons. We are dealing with international relations as such and
the disclosure without lawful authority of the information, document or article by the person".
The problem that the Minister and the Committee face is that the purpose of decent, good journalism is precisely to expose secret negotiations where it can. If there is any problem that has bedevilled relations throughout the 20th century, it has been secret diplomacy. I gave one obvious example, which acted as the death knell for the future of the British empire. The Suez affair was a climacteric which could not have occurred if the people of this country had known in advance the deal that had been made between Britain, France and Israel. If any journalist had discovered that, far from being punished, he should have been made a national hero because he would have prevented us from committing one of our worst crimes and disasters. Such actions are prevented by clause 6.
It is the function of the good journalist to ferret out secrecy in diplomacy. One has only to think of the


apparatus of the Common Market. I see that the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) is present; he pricks up his ears as soon as someone mentions the Common Market. It is perfectly proper that secret agreements within the Common Market purporting to be on behalf of the people of this country are ferreted out and published. Clause 6 is a further attack on the freedom of the word in this country. It has moved into a wider area than the area we have been discussing until now and it does not even have the caveat of the more serious definition of harm, which we attempted to put in. We wanted to replace the word "damage" with "serious harm" or "serious damage". For that reason, I support amendment No. 75.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: In the spirit of inquiry, I should like to ask a hypothetical question to find out how the clause might apply. As my hon. Friend the Minister rightly said, the clause states:
This section applies where…any information, document or other article which relates to security or intelligence, defence or international relations
comes into a person's possession.

Mr. John Patten: So my hon. Friend agrees that the interpretation that I gave the hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan) was correct?

Mr. Shepherd: I do not propose to play games with the Minister at this late hour—and under sentence of the guillotine at that.
Suppose that the Foreign Office is in communication with the Foreign Ministry in Madrid, and that it is its purpose to dispose of a peripheral problem—Gibraltar. In confidential talks that have not been the subject of discussion in the House, the Foreign Office makes it known to the Spanish Foreign Ministry that its objective is to accommodate Spanish interests in Gibraltar.
Through the indiscretion of a Spanish Foreign Ministry official, the information comes into the possession of the major newspaper of Spain. That newspaper wants to play down the embarrassment to Britain but nevertheless wants to send a signal to the Spanish people that, despite all the huffing and puffing of the British Foreign Office, the matter is settled: Britain is to dispose of its interests in Gibraltar and its support for the Gibraltese people, in whatever way is easiest. That is Britain's policy objective.
As I understand the clause, it would make it an offence to publish that information here, because it would trigger the damage described in clause 3(2), about which there is some concern in the Committee. I believe that yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary undertook to reconsider clause 3(3), which says that an offence has been committed by virtue of the fact that the information is confidential and the damage proven.
If the words "international relations" remain, the clause may inhibit the ability of the British public to make a real contribution, through the House, to the formulation of British foreign policy—something for which the House is responsible and for which it is held responsible by the electorate. The Bill as drafted could diminish seriously our ability freely to discuss information which, of its nature, becomes available from abroad.

Mr. Maclennan: Has the hon. Gentleman noticed the anomaly that the clause encapsulates? If the information that he describes were passed directly to the Pentagon,

having been obtained as a result of the exercise by a United States citizen of his rights under the Freedom of Information Act and published in the United States, as opposed to Spain, it would not be a criminal offence under the Bill to repeat it in this country. In this case the nature of the crime would be dictated not by our domestic requirements but by the domestic law of Spain or the United States.

Mr. Shepherd: It is altogether a curious clause, and that is why it is worth exploring. I know that the United States has something called "sovereign Government immunity", which enables the United States Government to remove from the public record information that is sensitive to foreign Governments. I understand that, and I would not criticise it.
Let me push the Gibraltese scenario a little further. We know that the position that I have outlined is not the Government's declared position. We know, too, that Britain has a number of peripheral problems. Belize, the Falklands, Gibraltar and Hong Kong are the four well known ones. The declared aim of Britain was the declared aim of Britain, but somehow, at the end of the day, we seem to accommodate something different from that which Foreign Office Ministers have told the House of Commons.
It was not my intention to go all the way down that road. I wanted to say merely that if this provision is allowed to stand as it is, it will be very difficult for a British paper to publish information that has become available. I am not sure why that new offence should be created in the Bill. Therefore, I look forward to clarification from my hon. Friend. Why do the Government want blanket control over information whose publication is not at present an offence?

Mr. Stuart Randall: Clause 6 deals with the disclosure of information that has been entrusted in confidence to other states or international organisations. The amendment with which we are dealing concerns subsection (1), which provides that where any information relating to security, intelligence, defence or international relations, which has been given in confidence by the United Kingdom to another state, has come into a person's possession without the authority of that state, that person is guilty of an offence if he makes a damaging disclosure.
We are lacking a real Committee stage. The impression I have from other hon. Members is that they agree with me that we have been unable to grasp the dimension of the matters with which this clause deals. It seems to expand the scope of the Bill very considerably. We have had no notes on the clauses, and I cannot understand why the Government feel it necessary to include any information that embraces international relations. I imagine that few hon. Members can envisage the real nature of any information that is referred to here relating to international relations. I imagine that quite a lot of it is trivial stuff—specifications, drafts, and so on. Nevertheless, I am disturbed, and quite alarmed, that the Bill should make provision for this catch-all facility.
On many occasions concern has been expressed in the House of Commons about the old Act having this catch-all effect. We seem to be going down that path—certainly so far as all the information associated with international


relations is concerned. I thought that we were supposed to be liberalising the 1911 Act. Instead, we seem to be going in the other direction.
I should like to understand the Government's motive behind clause 6(1)(a)(i), which refers to
any information, document or other article which—relates to security or intelligence, defence or international relations".
Let me put a few questions to the Minister so that I may understand why this provision has been included. First, what consideration is given to this question of the prevention of damaging disclosure by other Governments? Is it a two-way process? Do we have a deal within the EEC to ensure that there is coherence, if that is required?
Secondly, have there been disclosures which have prompted the Government to introduce the provision on international relations? I do not want the detail; I just want to know whether there is a serious problem. Are there difficulties with other countries that prevent us protecting our interests? I should like the Minister to answer that.

Mr. Gorst: I may help the hon. Gentleman who is thinking aloud about the Government's motives. The same may apply to other clauses which we have already discussed. I think the answer is that, like the nuclear deterrent, the provision will have failed if it has to be used. Exactly the same applies to all the new aspects that we have been discussing. If they lead to a prosecution, they will have failed. Unless the offences are monumentally obvious—by their very nature they will not be—the provisions will never have to be used. In parliamentary terms they are the equivalent of the nuclear deterrent. They are unlikely to be utilised.

Mr. Randall: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I find that depressing. It suggests that the legislation that we are creating is largely irrelevant.

Mr. Buchan: The purpose is not to use them but to put an apparatus of repression over the whole area. The same deterrence argument is made in support of the bomb. The real point is to prevent expression. It is part of the suppressing of the freedom of the word.

Mr. Randall: I will put forward a hypothetical case which I thought up in the Library just now, having read through the Bill. If we consider all the information referred to, I can imagine such a case emerging. Let us see the implications in the context of the Bill.
Let us suppose that a motor manufacturer, in conjunction with the Government, has produced a performance specification for a motor car. Let us assume that the document is sent by Her Majesty's Government to Brussels and is incorporated into a draft directive which would have confidential status. I hope that the Minister will listen; I should like him to comment on this because in a way it tests the comments of the hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan).
Let us assume that a British chap in the Commission allows, perhaps wrongly, the trade association for the relevant part of the industry to have access to the information. So a disclosure takes place without authority. The person in the trade association in turn consults individual member companies to find out what they think about the performance specification. Would that be an illegal act and could there be a prosecution? If so, we are creating legislation which would be unfair to British manufacturers.
If France and other countries do not have such legislation, will some manufacturers within the European Community have advantages over others? Will the legislation put British suppliers at a disadvantage? That is an example of the way in which classes of confidential information pass through the authorisation procedure. How does that process stand up to the legislation? If it does not, the consequences could be quite serious.
In earlier debates we heard that disclosure of international information can have two effects. First, it can damage confidence in our diplomatic service through the breach of confidentiality, and, secondly, the disclosure of confidential information can cause direct harm. Where do the Government stand? Were they encountering difficulties? We need to know whether direct disclosure is causing difficulties for the Government and for European Community countries. How often does it happen? In order to achieve some understanding of the matter—if we were in Standing Committee we would do so through amendments—it would be interesting to know the manifestation of such disclosure. Are press stories diplomatically embarrassing or are we concerned with the exploitation of contracts and commercial information?
Another matter about which I am uncertain, and, since we are in Committee, it should be clarified, is whether there are pressures from the EEC. Is the integration of the European Community a factor? If it is, is there a need for disclosure to be included in the Official Secrets Bill because there is growing confidentiality and more secrecy between the nations of the European Community? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan), I am worried about the tightening tip of information and the prevention of journalistic leaks.
I shall not go into detail, but we heard about corruption in the EEC involving £6 billion a year. When such a fraud is taking place—which I understand involves agriculture, shipping, imports, exports and pharmaceuticals—the prevention of disclosures of information raises certain questions.

Mr. Greg Knight: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how any fraud that involves farming is related
to security or intelligence, defence or international relations"?

Mr. Randall: The hon. Gentleman is consulting the Bill, but I am referring to the amendment which relates to international relations.
Finally, what are the shortcomings of the existing arrangements and why have the Government made changes in that way? I have tried to show the Minister that we need a far better understanding of the Bill, which we would have achieved by thrashing it out in Standing Committee. My impression from reading the Bill and gleaning what information I could—of course there is very little to read and few people to talk to on these matters—is that the Bill represents a step in a worrying direction and it appears that section 2 of the Official Secrets Act will not die for a long time.

11 pm

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I shall take only a short time to raise a serious issue. I fully appreciate the Minister's problem. Often, clauses in legislation on official secrets or, say, child care must be drawn so widely that we create an impossible situation to justify a certain position.


I can appreciate how a wide proposal can often be misinterpreted as stating that a ridiculous thing can happen in a certain context.
However, we are entitled to ask the Minister to state the Government's future intentions and policy in broad terms. There is only one matter on which I should like an assurance. Will the Minister assure me that, by and large, and subject to all kinds of matters, it is not the Government's intention to use this clause as a means of trying to suppress reports about frauds, launderings and illegalities? The definition of an international organisation in clause 3(5) is so wide that it can include anything. It covers
any matter relating to a State other than the United Kingdom or to an international organisation which is capable of affecting the relations of the United Kingdom with another State or with an international organisation.
That can cover anything—any report on any subject—the disclosure of which could result in damaging relations.
We all know that there are massive, costly frauds in the EEC. There have been all kinds of ridiculous reports. For example, the other day we heard about how an enormous amount of EEC money is being spent on financing the Mafia for delivering non-existent fruit juice to NATO headquarters in Palermo. That is damaging and embarrassing. Relations between Britain and the EEC could be embarrassed if a report from one Government Department to another in the United Kingdom were revealed. People in the EEC would be upset. We know that there is a massive fraud in exporting so-called food, and exporting offal and calling it pure beef.
It is not because of some journalists that we know that such things are happening. We have had confirmation from the Court of Auditors that there is a mass, widespread fraud, which is costing every taxpayer in Great Britain a great deal, and is causing great damage. We know that the Government are interested in the matter. The Prime Minister said that she will raise it at the next meeting of the European Council and find out what on earth we can do to stop agricultural fraud.

Mr. Greg Knight: Subsection (1)(a) is about communications in confidence. Our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is not making such communications in confidence.

Mr. Taylor: I cannot understand what my hon. Friend is trying to get at. Of course my right hon. Friend makes public speeches. But Government Departments write papers for her. Details about further frauds involving the Mafia or the IRA—we know that they are both involved—are not the type of thing that the Prime Minister would make a public speech about. There might be a report from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at No. 10. That would be a confidential matter. If revealed, it could damage relations between the United Kingdom and the EEC. My hon. Friend must surely accept that that can happen.
The Government are interested in the matter, and we hope that something can be done about frauds, irregularities and wrongdoings. However, there are other kinds of wrongdoings. Hon. Members may remember that, after giving lots of money at Fontainebleau, the Prime Minister came back with a wonderful piece of paper

that said that we would have strict budgetary control. We know now what happened. We did not know what happened the other time. By using accountancy frauds, the Commission was able to put the matter out the window. There were ridiculous accountancy devices, such as a 10-month year in 1987.
I can appreciate that the Government do not want to cause trouble between Britain and the EEC, between Britain and France, or between Britain and Germany by having confidential matters revealed. I can appreciate their point of view, and I am sure that they can appreciate ours and that of the people who want to find out about those matters.
On the other hand, if things are being done which cost people money because laws are being broken—because frauds are being committed and money is being siphoned off to help the IRA and the Mafia—we would surely never use this type of clause to prosecute people because they have revealed an illegality.
We are not gunning for the Minister in any way. We appreciate the difficulty of drafting a suitable clause; if it is too wide, people will say that the Government could do ridiculous things. I hope that we can be assured that the Government have no intention of using the clause to prosecute somebody for disclosing the truth about a fraud, an illegality or a wrongdoing. If my hon. Friend could say yes to that, it would give a clear idea of what the Government have in mind.

Mr. John Patten: I begin by saying yes to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor)—yes in a policy sense, because no Government supports fraud. I can answer yes to his question about the clause—he asked whether we would use clause 6—because it deals only with our official information which goes out of this country, provided in confidence, about international relations to another state or to an international organisation.
My hon. Friend will no doubt know, because he took part in the debates on the provision, that clause 3 deals with confidential information provided to this country. I hope that my hon. Friend is content with that reassurance.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Yes, I am. But information can often be transmitted by the Government to an international organisation about frauds and illegalities taking place elsewhere. In other words, this is United Kingdom information provided by United Kingdom Departments about activities elsewhere. I am grateful for what the Minister said. His answer was clear and precise, and I hope he will accept that, while this is United Kingdom information going out, it could be concerned with frauds happening elsewhere.

Mr. Maclennan: Does the Minister—

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Paul Dean): Order. We should have one intervention at a time. Mr. Patten.

Mr. Patten: I am willing to give way to the hon. Gentleman, Sir Paul.

Mr. Maclennan: Does the Minister feel able to give the assurance that he has given to his hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor)? We had a long debate earlier today in which the Attorney-General made it clear that issues of prosecution—about fraud or anything else


—were determined not by Government policy but by him in a judicial capacity. He was at great pains to make that point, and I think that the Minister was present when he made it.

Mr. Patten: I was answering two specific questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East. One was a policy question. He asked whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to undertake cover-ups about frauds, and the answer is no. I expressed the answer as yes because that was how he asked me to express it.
His second question—the answer to which he no doubt knew, but he was probing the Treasury Bench—was about clause 6. I said that it deals only with our official information relating to international relations which we provide in confidence to another state or to an international organisation.
Matters for prosecution under clause 3—under which some prosecutions might be brought—would be for the Attorney-General using his powers under clause 9, and those were the points to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred when he addressed the Committee this afternoon.
I will explain why the Government think this provision is important and then I will answer each of the detailed questions asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins); the important example about the Spanish newspaper, the El Pais, given by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd); and the hypothetical example posed by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall).
It is clear that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) agrees that it is right to protect information relating to security, intelligence or defence that this country provides in confidence.

Mr. Maclennan: indicated dissent.

Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman does not agree with that proposition, and I am deeply disappointed. We should be prepared to protect information relating to defence when its disclosure would jeopardise our interests abroad. Equally, information concerning matters of the greatest sensitivity about relations between states whose disclosure would have the same effect should also be protected.
Let me give the Committee examples illustrating the validity of that argument. Even if the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland does not want such information to be protected—I repeat that I was disappointed to see him indicate dissent from a sedentary position—I am sure he accepts that international co-operation is one of the best ways of pursuing measures to curb and to combat international terrorism. Surely there cannot be anything between the hon. Gentleman and myself in that respect.

Mr. Maclennan: Of course I accept that intelligence and security information must be protected. My objection is that the creation of an offence under clause 6 will depend on whether the disclosure that occurred in another country was legal. It is information that is to be protected, but the clause ties the offence to the manner in which the information was made public.

Mr. Patten: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman entirely understands the clause. I shall develop my first example and then give another.
Under the Bill, most forms of co-operation at Government level will fall not under the security, intelligence or defence heads, but under information relating to international relations. If such information is not protected by the clause, the effectiveness of the co-operation could be threatened.
I give a harder example—my first was rather a burst of generality—of how sensitive information could go unprotected should the Committee decide to accept the amendment. Suppose we were debating with another country, or with a number of countries, the possibility of taking measures against a state in response to its violation of human rights. That is something that we discuss from time to time in international forums—and something we are pressed to do all the time in relation to some countries. Suppose also that in the course of those discussions we provided confidential information as to how our country would enforce the measures.
If that information was leaked by an official of one of the countries with which we were co-ordinating our actions against the state with the bad human rights record, and if the journalist to whom that leak was given published it in this country, the state against which we were contemplating taking action might immediately take retaliatory action against any British citizens resident there. As we know from certain things that have been said in some states this week, such a situation could have harmful consequences.
Under the amendment, the journalist would be free to publish—though any prosecution would be subject to the damage tests. Under the Bill, the person making the disclosure could be prosecuted—but how could he be convicted? He or she could not be convicted unless the prosecution proved that they knew the information had originally been provided by our country to other countries, that it had been provided in confidence, that its disclosure by the journalist, for example, endangered the safety of Britons abroad, and that the journalist knew what he was doing.
11.15 pm
We have had some examples put to the Committee. The example of the EC trade association was an interesting one, but the information that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West mentioned, even if it were official information, would not fall within the definition in clause 3(5). Therefore, it would not be caught by clause 6. In other words, it would not fall within the definition of international relations as set out in the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills gave a specific Spanish example. I prefer not to talk about the Gibraltar question, which is a policy issue, but I think it was as good an example as any put to the Committee. I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend. He was perhaps a bit grumpy with me when I intervened in his speech. I hope he did not think that I was in any sense trying to divide him from the hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan). I was simply trying to get to the facts. If he thinks I was making a cheap political point, I apologise. If he reads Hansard, he will not find me making a cheap political point at any stage.
As regards the example my hon. Friend gave of a report in a Spanish newspaper, there would be no offence under clause 6 if a newspaper in this country published what was leaked to and appeared in a Spanish newspaper following a disclosure without authority by a Spanish civil servant


unless publication had caused further damage here. In my hon. Friend's case, that would come under clause 3(2) and the jeopardising of our interests abroad—it would be the jeopardising test. It is extremely difficult to imagine circumstances in which any jury would be prepared to convict.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: I know that the Government rely very much on the test of harm as described in clause 3(2), and the anxiety has been about the test of harm being met by clause 3(3)—information of its nature confidential. Although the Government's legal adviser says that it is absolutely certain that that is not so, the Government are to meet the anxiety by redrafting the provision. Is my hon. Friend giving us an undertaking that the Government's amendments will be moved on Report so that the House will have an opportunity to look at how the scheme of things works?

Mr. Patten: I think my hon. Friend was in the Committee yesterday when my right hon. Friend gave the undertaking to reconsider the issue. But I should like to press my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills a little further. Is he satisfied with the explanation about the position concerning the supposed publication in a Spanish newspaper, in the context of the undertaking given by my right hon. Friend yesterday?

Mr. Shepherd: This is nonsense. Without seeing something, I cannot say whether I am satisfied. I was here yesterday when my right hon. Friend spoke on this matter. He gave an undertaking to redraft the clause. I have asked my hon. Friend the Minister of State whether it will be done by Report. He then asks me—this is the usual circumlocutory route—whether I was present yesterday when the Secretary of State said that he would amend the Bill. The question to which I return is, "Will it be done for the Report stage?"

Mr. Patten: I can only repeat the undertaking that was given yesterday by my right hon. Friend. I hope that my hon. Friend will listen to what I say. On the face of the Bill, as drafted, and not as amended, on the example of the Spanish newspaper that was given by my hon. Friend, under clause 3(2) there would be the possibility of prosecution only if it could be demonstrated that we were jeopardising our interests abroad.

Mr. Shepherd: This is maddening. My right hon. Friend conceded yesterday that there could be a misunderstanding, as the Bill is drafted, and that clause 3(3) triggers off or satisfies the damage test. That is the reason why my right hon. Friend is to amend it. So for my hon. Friend the Minister of State to say that it does not raise the anxiety, as the Bill is drafted, seems to be contradicting the Secretary of State. I do not know why my hon. Friend is getting into a fluff over this; I was merely asking a very simple question.

Mr. Patten: I never quite know what "getting into a fluff" means, but, with the permission of the Committee, I shall read the words of my right hon. Friend from yesterday's Official Report. He said:
On behalf of the Government, I am happy that the matter should be aired again, if that is the view of my right hon. Friend"—

and there he was referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour)—
when it is procedurally in order to do so. If that is on Report, as you have suggested, Mr. Walker, we will fall in with whatever arrangemens suit the Committee."—[Official Report, 15 February 1989; Vol. 147, c. 337.]
My right hon. Friend had to add that conditional "if that is on Report" because that is a matter for selection. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"] No, I am simply repeating for the avoidance of doubt the undertaking that my right hon. Friend gave to the Committee yesterday.
If I were to express a hope, certainly in the light of the strong feelings of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, which I respect, it would be that we can dispose of this matter on Report.
May I deal next with the three important points that were raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing? On the OECD point, my right hon. Friend seemed to be saying—I see that he indicates assent—that the effect of clause 6 is that the disclosure of information provided to another state could be an offence, but if disclosed here before being provided it would not be an offence.
I think that that would not be the case, because information about economic matters alone does not become information relating to international relations simply because it is provided to another country or to another organisation.

Mr. Higgins: My understanding from the Bill is that it clearly does. Anything is "international relations" if it is translated from one country to another, as I understand the clause. Therefore, we are in the rather absurd position where something that is not subject to criminal law if it is discovered here and published becomes subject to the criminal law if it is given to another country and then published. The moment that one gives some information on, say, zero-rating of VAT to another country, that is in the sphere of international relations.

Mr. Patten: With great respect to my right hon. Friend, I must say that just because a piece of information is supplied to an international organisation or to another State does not mean that it automatically falls within the ambit of international relations. A lot of information flows from one country to another which does not remotely affect international relations. That is certainly not the effect of clause 3(5).

Mr. Buchan: rose—

Mr. Maclennan: rose—

Mr. Patten: I shall deal with my right hon. Friend's second point, referring to information coming back from Brussels.

Mr. Higgins: May we stay with the first point for a moment, because it is not clear? Clause 3(1) refers to
any information, document or other article relating to international relations".
The example that I have given of a change in the rate of value added tax in the context of an approximation of indirect taxation within the EEC is clearly a matter of discussion in international relations. As I understand it, if the information is obtained here and is published, it is not subject to criminal law. But, more importantly, we have no way of telling which way it has been arrived at and which penalty is to be imposed.

Mr. Patten: The penalty, if any were attracted to the OECD example—I do not believe that one would be—is there for all to see in clause 3(2), which says:
For the purposes of subsection (1) above a disclosure is damaging if…it jeopardises the interests of the United Kingdom abroad, seriously obstructs the promotion or protection by the United Kingdom of those interests or endangers the safety of British citizens abroad".

Mr. Higgins: But it is not just a question whether the information is damaging. We know that it is said to be damaging if it is leaked at all because that shows that we cannot keep things confidential.

Mr. Patten: All that is subject to the damage test that I have just read.
My right hon. Friend referred to material coming back from Brussels. If I understood his point correctly, a prosecution could succeed only if damage can be proved.
I cannot supply my right hon. Friend with the practices and procedures of the EC countries and the United States for dealing with such information, nor do I think that it is necessary. Here I refer to a point raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West. We have no need for any kind of reciprocal information because we are protecting our interests, not those of any other countries. The Bill has been drafted in the light of United Kingdom experience and the protection of United Kingdom experience here.
The amendment would inhibit the Government from pursuing the most effective means of protecting and promoting Britain's interests, and I sincerely hope that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland will not try to weaken the Bill so radically by pushing the amendment to a Division.

Mr. Randall: Let me refer the Minister to clause 3(5) which says:
'international relations' means the relations between States".
I was referring to relations between states. At the end of that subsection it says:
which is capable of affecting the relations of the United Kingdom with another State".
The case that I gave of a motor manufacturer in Europe which involved communications of information between Her Majesty's Government and the Commission would qualify. The various countries involved in motor manufacture would be the ones that would be affected.
We shall not thrash this matter out tonight, but I hope that the Minister will write to me about it before Report.

Mr. Patten: Of course I shall.

Mr. Higgins: Since we are in Committee, may I seek to persuade my hon. Friend that mine is a point that he should look at before Report? Clause 6(1)(a) applies to anything which
has been communicated in confidence by or on behalf of the United Kingdom to another State or to an international organisation".
Even if we take it that narrowly, it would seem that any information that is communicated to another organisation or state comes within the ambit of the clause. As I was arguing at the beginning, such information may not be of a kind which attracts a criminal penalty within the context of the rest of the Bill, but would seem to do so if it is then communicated abroad.

Mr. Patten: I entirely see the point that my right hon. Friend is making, but I suggest to him that he needs to look closely at subsection (1)(a) which provides for
any information, document or other article which—(i) relates to security or intelligence, defence or international relations".
A set of economic statistics does not necessarily relate to international relations.

Mr. Higgins: The approximation of value added tax clearly does. We are much involved in international negotiations about the approximation of value added tax. It is within the scope of the clause and, therefore, it appears to attract a criminal sanction if the information is leaked and then published in this country. There is no dispute that the approximation of value added tax is a matter of international relations. If I have understood it correctly—indeed my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said as much—if there were a leak from the Treasury about the approximation of value added tax, that is not something which would be subject to criminal sanctions.
My hon. Friend must study this and consider my specific example, which is a clear-cut one.

Mr. Maclennan: I share the concern expressed by the right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) about this point. Indeed, it was such concerns that led me to table the amendment in the first place. What I should like to press the Minister on, however, is what he has not dealt with—the fact that this offence depends on the domestic law of the country in which the leak occurred.
As I have said, if a leak about the harmonisation of taxes occurs in a country where it is improper, it appears that that would create an offence in this country under the clause. However, if the information is obtained in a country such as the United States under the Freedom of Information Act, there would be no criminal offence as a result of the publication of that information. I ask the Minister whether it is tolerable that the existence of the criminal penalty should turn on the state of the domestic law of foreign countries. That is monstrous, and I do not know why the Minister did not answer the point earlier. I presume that it was because he had not thought of it and had not been advised. The least that the Minister can do is take this matter away. He should not give us an arrogant reply that suggests that he has actually thought about these matters, when he has not even had the courtesy to reply to the points that have been made.
It is extremely arrogant to reply to the debate in the way in which the Minister has. He has not answered the points which have been made and he has treated the amendment as though it were a frivolous one. It is an extremely serious provision which creates a criminal offence which could result in people being sent to prison for two years. It is about time that the Minister stopped treating the House in this de haut en bas manner. Frequently, in earlier stages of the debate, he has had to come to the House to apologise for getting it wrong. The right hon. Member for Worthing has made an extremely important point. The Minister would know that it is an extremely important point, and he should give an explanation.
Earlier the Home Secretary admitted that the definition under clause 3(5) was unsatisfactory. In answer to an


intervention from the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), the Home Secretary accepted that
In this section 'international relations' means the relations between States
was not of itself an adequate definition. He undertook to consider how that definition could be tightened up. The passage that the Minister quoted had nothing to do with the undertaking given by the Home Secretary. The Minister must reconsider this matter in the light of the points made in the debate.
Furthermore, the Minister's answer to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) was wrong. He was wrong to say that the matter was not covered by clause 3(5). The question of specifications of cars presented by this country to the Commission in Brussels to become the subject matter of a European Community directive is plainly an international matter as defined in the clause. By sweeping such propositions aside in a cavalier manner, the Minister again showed his contempt for the proceedings of the Committee which has characterised his whole approach to the Bill from the outset. It is about time that he treated the Committee with some seriousness. Obviously he expects us to let the whole thing go through without any more question just because he said it.

Mr. Corbett: In response to a question from the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) the Minister gave an assurance that it was not the Government's intention to use the provisions in clause 6 to inhibit the publication of evidence in relation to fraud which originates in this country which is to be sent to Brussels for action to be taken. He gave the hon. Member for Southend, East a specific undertaking that the clause would not be used in that way. However, clause 4(2)(a)(iii) relates to information which
impedes the prevention or detection of offences".
Quite properly, as fraud is involved, the police could argue, "For heaven's sake, if that gets out it will inhibit us in properly dealing with the detection of the suspected offence." There is at least the possibility that the police might use that argument when they are undertaking this kind of special investigation. That should at least cause the Minister to question the blanket assurance that he gave to his hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

SAFEGUARDING OF INFORMATION

Mr. Richard Shepherd: I beg to move amendment No. 40, in page 8, line 8, leave out 'fails to comply with' and insert 'retains it after receiving'.
This amendment is more by way of inquiry and to provide more background. The amendment is intended to meet the possibility of someone who improperly receives information and destroys it and therefore is not able to return it. We are all mindful that there have been several newspaper instances and I will not base my arguments on them. However, what happens if the information has been

destroyed and cannot be returned and the person cannot confirm to the satisfaction of the authorities that it has been destroyed? I want clarification on that.

Mr. Foot: Although the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has introduced his amendment as if it were a minor amendment, it has many implications and it touches on other clauses which we should have the opportunity to discuss.
I accept that problems arise with the guillotine and I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). The Minister's difficulties arise through the operation of the guillotine. I am sure that if it had not been for the operation of the guillotine, the Minister would not have given such a clumsy answer to one of his colleagues who was seeking a reassurance about the concession made by the Home Secretary. We have all sat through two consecutive days' debates on the Bill and if it had not been so late at night I am sure that the Minister would have leapt to his feet and accepted the need for an amendment which the Home Secretary agreed and there would have been no trouble on that score.
The right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) also put forward very serious arguments, and in a proper Committee stage without a guillotine the Minister would have had a chance to consider what had been said before the debate on clause stand part. But the possibility of any debate on clause stand part has been removed, which makes consideration of the Bill much more difficult.
Thanks to the way in which the guillotine has fallen, and thanks to its crude operation, we have not discussed clause 7 at all. Clause 7, however, touches on amendment No. 40, which tries to remedy the position, although whether it could do so is very doubtful. Although clauses 7 and 8, like clause 6, have wider aims—wider, indeed, than some of us had previously understood the Bill to comprise—they try in part to deal with those who have authority to use information that they obtained as Ministers, specifying how they must gain the authorisation. They would have to comply not only with clause 8 and the appropriate amendments, but with clause 7 as well.
It is clear from even a rough reading of the two clauses that if they had been in operation over the past 30 or 40 years far and away the worst offender against them would have been Sir Winston Churchill. No one has ever carted away documents from No. 10 Downing street—or wherever else he had been—on such a huge scale. That was very much to the benefit of the reading public, and, I would think, to the national interest as well. It certainly benefited the gaiety of nations for Sir Winston to be able to take away such huge quantities of documents and to use them as he did between 1945 and 1951. I was in the House at the time, and I may say that Sir Winston was much better employed in writing his memoirs than he was in conducting the opposition here—although he managed to perform the two tasks at the same time.
Let us suppose that Sir Winston had had to go through the details of each of those documents and to obtain authorisation in each case. Let us suppose that he had been told that if he did not do it properly he would be had up. I assure the House that I am not exaggerating. Winston Churchill thought that the state belonged to him, in a sense—that the state owed him a living. To some extent it did, because his services had been so great. Incidentally, this


characteristic ran in the family: it dates back to the days of the Duke of Marlborough, who also did some services to the country and who carted away huge quantities of state documents, long before such nonsense as this was laid before the House of Commons.
It is a question of some interest and importance how the legislation will apply to, for instance, Ministers writing their memoirs. There has been quite a lot of controversy in the newspapers about that recently. Until a few years ago there was an absolute provision that if Ministers did not go to the head of the Cabinet—whoever that might be—in the proper way and obtain permission, they would be infringing the rules laid down by the Cabinet Office.
Of course, it was never exactly clear how the Official Secrets Act applied to such operations. In a sense, the matter was covered by authorisation of some form being given. I suppose that what would be claimed about clause 7—which we are not allowed to discuss under the guillotine—is that the form of authorisation is stated and touched upon in clause 8. Here again, the Committee should look at these matters properly, have the chance to examine them and the chance to put up amendments to the Government, on which the Government could make their replies. That is how legislation of this kind should be carried through. But it is the Government's decision that we are not allowed to discuss clause 7 in detail—or in any sense. Perhaps people would like to read it all. I do not know if I would be in order to read it out now—I should think that I would be. Anybody who reads it will see that it is trying to deal with this subject, although it has been excluded from our discussions. It is partly governed by clause 8.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills has sought to have an amendment accepted that could be some protection, but it is not sufficient protection. That emphasises how wrong it is for the Committee to be forced to discuss such matters with no possibility for further amendments at such a late stage.

Mr. Gorst: Listening to the right hon. Gentleman has made me reflect. I wonder whether he is able to answer my rhetorical question. We have about 15 minutes, in which the Minister may also be able to reply, before we finish the Committee stage. Has the right hon. Gentleman wondered whether it would be appropriate, in view of all the uncertainty about what might be regarded as classified information that could be used without damage, and the reverse, for there to be machinery available so that newspapers could ring someone up and say, "Can we use this information? Is it classified?"? Perhaps we should have a whole Ministry to deal with the subject.

Mr. Foot: That might be one way of dealing with the matter. There was a question raised when somebody was arguing about the operation of the Official Secrets Act 1911 only a few months ago. An editor asked a Minister, "How should we deal with such a question?" The reply was, "Ring up No. 10 and see whether you can publish". Some of the other journalists did not think that that was the most sensible or liberal way to deal with the question.
I do not intend any mockery of the Minister when I say that on this, as on previous occasions, he has stood up to the blast of argument as well as he is able in the circumstances. But he should agree that it is a bad way to conduct legislation of this nature in the House of that

Commons. If we consider the debate on the amendment or the debate on clause 6 and the position of journalists, what should have happened is what would have happened in the case of any other interests outside the House. There was a chance for the Minister to go to the editors, the Newspaper Publishers Association or even the National Union of Journalists. Of course, it is terrible to suggest to the Government that they should ever have discussions with the people who do the work. That is an outrageous proposition, which the Minister would throw out of the window immediately.
But let us consider the Newspaper Publishers Association, the Guild of British Newspaper Editors or the people who have professional qualifications in these matters. We are introducing a maze of new regulations through which they will have to steer if they are to do what they see as their duty to publish what they are entitled to publish and what the British people should be able to read. Why were the people who will have to operate the legislation not consulted? If it had been the farmers, there would have been plenty of consultation. If other people had been involved, there would have been consultation. But I do not think that there has been any consultation with the people in the newspaper business, who will have to operate these rules. If there was any such consultation, the results of it have not been translated into the Bill.
We have not much time left on the Bill and it is a great pity that such a Bill should be put through the House of Commons in such a way. That is not an attack on the Minister, or the Home Secretary, alone. As I said in a previous debate, I have listened carefully to what he and others have had to say on specific clauses. They have made a much better case on some clauses than on others, but on some they have hardly made a case at all.

Mr. Bermingham: Has my right hon. Friend considered the problems that might arise in respect of a communication that is purely oral? How does one comply with a request for the return of an oral communication or prove that one has disposed of a piece of information conveyed orally?

Mr. Foot: The Government have not even caught up with the telephone, let alone with the other modern inventions, which are beyond me. They do not seem to know that journalists use that extraordinary modern instrument.
The clauses need to be properly examined, and that is what a proper Committee stage would have achieved. Instead, we have had an absolute travesty of a Committee stage. These clauses are not as important as the preceding clauses, but they are just as badly drafted and are just as likely to give rise to future difficulties. Hon. Members say, "The House of Lords had better come to our rescue." I have never been very much in favour of the House of Lords coming to our rescue. I think that the House of Commons should do its duty, but as the Government have denied us the right to do our duty, I hope that others will look very carefully at clauses 6, 7 and 8, which we have had not the slightest chance of examining in any proper detail.

Mr. Randall: I shall be very brief, as we have only a few minutes left because of this awful guillotine.
I should like to make a suggestion about amendment No. 40, which refers to a person's being guilty of an offence if he fails to comply with an official direction for the return or disposal of documentation. I believe that the direction


says that a person must not retain a document after receiving the official direction. Essentially the official direction will be a piece of paper saying, "Mr. Smith. Reference XYZ. Please return or destroy the information by 10 o'clock on such and such a date." It would be a very simple thing. I am appealing for simplification.
I think that the amendment would make matters clearer. We are constantly told that legal language is too difficult for people to understand and that we should create laws that people can comprehend. The amendment would be an improvement. It would be better to link the guilt with a person's retaining information after receiving an official direction rather than his failure to comply with an official direction. I shall leave it to the Minister to see what we can do about that.
The proposal is a good one, which would improve the Bill, and we can use this opportunity to see whether the Minister is his own man. I am referring not only to the hon. Gentleman but to the Home Secretary when I say that very little has been given away during our proceedings. The Bill has hardly been changed at all. We have just about squeaked a Report stage. This is a sad occasion. As a result of the Bill, the Government have got themselves a bad reputation even among their own supporters. I refer the House to the article in The Guardian today which said that the Bill is highly restrictive.

Mr. Bermingham: Even allowing for the amendment in its current terms if the information is oral, as leaked information very often is, can my hon. Friend perhaps give the Minister some advice, if the Minister is prepared to listen, as to how one disposes of it? How could one prove that one had got rid of it or that one had forgotten it? [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) wants to make a pertinent comment it would be awfully nice if he had the good manners and courtesy to get to his feet and say so. But let us leave that aside.
The fact is that the information is not just in documentary form. It does not come that way; it very often comes in oral form. How does this clause deal with oral information? It is nonsensical that the Minister has failed to address this point, and it is nonsensical that the Bill does not deal with it.

Mr. Randall: My hon. Friend has raised a very interesting question. I refer him to clause 8(4), which refers to any person who
has in his possession or under his control any document or article".
On the question of what happens after oral disclosure takes place, I still say that, instead of reading "Resist, resist, resist" from the briefs provided by the Department, the Minister ought to concede this point. That would make this a very special occasion, bearing mind the fact that we are in the last few minutes of the Committee stage. The Minister would be improving the legislation and making it easier to read. It would be a worthwhile thing to do. Indeed, it would enhance the Minister's political virility. He would be his own man. He would actually be making a decision at the Dispatch Box, and that would enhance his position. We are giving him a great chance to end the Committee stage with a big bang by actually accepting an amendment.

Mr. John Patten: What an extraordinary set of statements from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall), who just wandered into the Committee, for the first time, towards the end of the day and picked up the brief, presumably because his hon. and right hon. Friends had exhausted themselves by their exertions.

Mr. Whitney: Where is the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley)?

Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) asks, "Where is the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook?" I am afraid I have not set eyes on him since 7.15 pm.
The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) said that it was extremely important that when we looked at issues that could affect the media and journalism in this country, we should consult. In fact, we did have a number of consultations. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Guild of British Newspaper Editors. Well, respresentatives of that organisation came to see me on more than one occasion to discuss a number of these issues. Indeed, some of the changes that were made between the White Paper stage and the Bill stage—I refer to the crime category, with which clause 4 deals—reflect, to a certain extent, arguments that were put forward by those people, and my right hon. Friend and I have told them so on a number of occasions.

Mr. Greg Knight: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Patten: I must finish this reply in the two minutes that I have left.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) put forward an innocent-sounding argument. He asked what would happen to an unfortunate person who had been given a bit of confidential information. Of course, under the Bill it is not an offence to receive information, as is also the case under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act. My hon. Friend talked about such a person, rather than giving the information back, shoving it in the fire or mincing it up. Presumably such a person would have no difficulty at all in proving to the authorities what he had done. The unfortunate side effect of my hon. Friend's amendment—and I am sure he did not intend this—is that it would allow people to destroy information, to destroy documents, to destroy articles, not belonging to them, and to prevent those who had committed a criminal offence from being identified.
What we are dealing with are not trivial papers but articles that could put lives in danger or threaten the security of the country. We could be talking about papers that refer to the design of a weapon or about a computer disk, which is an article, containing the names of security and intelligence service personnel. Are we really to say that once such a document or article is out of official hands it can never be recovered? I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills did not intend that to be the case—

It being Twelve o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to the order [13 February] and the resolution [15 February], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.

Amendment negatived.

THE CHAIRMAN then proceeded, pursuant to the order [13 February] and the resolution [15 February], to put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at Twelve o'clock.

Clauses 8 to 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2

REPEALS AND REVOCATION

Motion made, and Question put, That this schedule be the second schedule to the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 178, Noes 33.

Division No. 100]
[12.01 am


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Forth, Eric


Amess, David
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Amos, Alan
Fox, Sir Marcus


Arbuthnot, James
Franks, Cecil


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Freeman, Roger


Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)
French, Douglas


Aspinwall, Jack
Gale, Roger


Atkinson, David
Gill, Christopher


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles


Bellingham, Henry
Gorman, Mrs Teresa


Bendall, Vivian
Gow, Ian


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Gower, Sir Raymond


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Gregory, Conal


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')


Boswell, Tim
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)


Bottomley, Peter
Ground, Patrick


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Bowis, John
Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)


Brazier, Julian
Hampson, Dr Keith


Bright, Graham
Hanley, Jeremy


Browne, John (Winchester)
Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)


Buck, Sir Antony
Hayward, Robert


Burns, Simon
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Burt, Alistair
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Butterfill, John
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Hind, Kenneth


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Carrington, Matthew
Holt, Richard


Carttiss, Michael
Hordern, Sir Peter


Cash, William
Howard, Michael


Chapman, Sydney
Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)


Chope, Christopher
Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)


Colvin, Michael
Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Cope, Rt Hon John
Hunter, Andrew


Cran, James
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Irvine, Michael


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Jack, Michael


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Jackson, Robert


Day, Stephen
Janman, Tim


Devlin, Tim
Jessel, Toby


Dorrell, Stephen
Key, Robert


Emery, Sir Peter
King. Roger (B'ham N'thfield)


Fallon, Michael
Kirkhope, Timothy


Favell, Tony
Knapman, Roger


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Fishburn, John Dudley
Lawrence, Ivan


Forman, Nigel
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)





Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Lightbown, David
Shelton, Sir William


Lilley, Peter
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)


Lord, Michael
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


McLoughlin, Patrick
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael
Stevens, Lewis


Major, Rt Hon John
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Malins, Humfrey
Summerson, Hugo


Marland, Paul
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Maude, Hon Francis
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick
Temple-Morris, Peter


Miller, Sir Hal
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)
Thorne, Neil


Moss, Malcolm
Thurnham, Peter


Moynihan, Hon Colin
Tracey, Richard


Nelson, Anthony
Tredinnick, David


Neubert, Michael
Trippler, David


Newton, Rt Hon Tony
Trotter, Neville


Nicholls, Patrick
Twinn, Dr Ian


Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Viggers, Peter


Norris, Steve
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley
Waller, Gary


Oppenheim, Phillip
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Paice, James
Watts, John


Patten, John (Oxford W)
Wells, Bowen


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Wheeler, John


Porter, David (Waveney)
Whitney, Ray


Portillo, Michael
Widdecombe, Ann


Powell, William (Corby)
Wilkinson, John


Rattan, Keith
Wilshire, David


Rathbone, Tim
Wolfson, Mark


Redwood, John
Wood, Timothy


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Yeo, Tim


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Ryder, Richard



Sackville, Hon Tom
Tellers for the Ayes:


Sayeed, Jonathan
Mr. Tony Durant and


Shaw, David (Dover)
Mr. David Maclean.




NOES


Abbott, Ms Diane
McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Maclennan, Robert


Battle, John
McWilliam, John


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Martlew, Eric


Bermingham, Gerald
Michael, Alun


Buchan, Norman
Pike, Peter L.


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Prescott, John


Corbett, Robin
Randall, Stuart


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Skinner, Dennis


Foster, Derek
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


Godman, Dr Norman A.
Spearing, Nigel


Hinchliffe, David
Steel, Rt Hon David


Hughes, John (Coventry NE)
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


Johnston, Sir Russell



Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil
Tellers for the Noes:


Livsey, Richard
Mr. Frank Haynes and


McAvoy, Thomas
Mr. Jimmy Dunnachie.


McFall, John

Questions accordingly agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Bill reported, with amendment; as amended, to be considered this day.

Orders of the Day — Rate Support Grant (Derbyshire)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John M. Taylor.]

Mr. Dennis Skinner: The reason for this debate is partly to try to redress much of the imbalance that has occurred in the Tory press in Derbyshire and nationally about rates and rate support grants—

Mr. Greg Knight: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Skinner: I thought that this might happen.

Mr. Knight: The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) obviously has clairvoyant powers.
I refer you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to today's Order Paper and in particular to page 1891, of the remaining Orders of the Day and Notice of Motions. No. 36, tabled in my name and the name of my hon. Friends the Members for Erewash (Mr. Rost) and for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin), refers to the services of Derbyshire county council and states that, since 1988, it
has wasted public money on political propaganda, including television advertising and publishing a tabloid newspaper.
I shall not read it all, but it highlights the fact that ratepayers of Derbyshire have had to suffer a 168 per cent. increase since 1982.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. What is the point of order for me?

Mr. Knight: If you turn to page 1858 of the Order Paper, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will notice that the terms of the Adjournment debate standing in the name of the hon. Member for Bolsover refer to Derbyshire county council services. I refer you to Erskine May, page 372 and the section headed:
General restrictions on motions for the adjournment of the House.
It says in paragraph (a):
Members are precluded, under the rule of anticipation…from discussing on an adjournment motion a notice of motion or an order of the day which already stands upon the notice paper or order book.
I have already on the order book for today a notice of motion dealing with the disgraceful waste of ratepayers' money by Derbyshire county council—[Interruption.]—and I submit to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the hon. Member for Bolsover is precluded from raising this matter on the Adjournment under the rule of anticipation.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Under Standing Order No. 26 it has to be determined whether a discussion is out of order on the ground of anticipation. Regard must be had by the occupant of the Chair
to the probability of the matter anticipated being brought before the House within a reasonable time.
I know of no plans for the motion standing in the name of the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) being brought forward for debate, and indeed that was confirmed by the Leader of the House at business questions today. I am not, therefore, prepared to apply the rule of anticipation in this case.

Mr. Knight: Further to my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I would not wish to challenge your ruling and I accept that there is no chance of my motion being called

today. But I have re-tabled my motion for tomorrow morning and I wondered whether—indeed, it could be the case—it would be reached in tomorrow's business.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is hypothetical. We shall have to see how we get on tomorrow. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: I do not think that my hon. Friends and I—

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I will listen to the point of order from the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin). I must remind him and the House that we are now taking time out of the Adjournment debate.

Mr. McLoughlin: My point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, relates to the Official Report of 8 March 1988, column 296. I refer to an Adjournment debate which I had about Derbyshire county council. I draw to the attention of the House—and I have previously drawn it to the attention of the Clerks—the fact that the county council responded to my Adjournment debate in its usual hysterical way by accusing me, in having an Adjournment debate, of hiding behind parliamentary privilege. It is—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. What is the point of order for the Chair?

Mr. McLoughlin: I raise an important point with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I have heard tonight from various sources that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and his hon. Friends—some of whom I permitted to speak in my debate—intend to speak for the entire time of the Adjournment debate and not allow time for a Minister to reply—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."]

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We had better get on with the Adjournment debate. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: I assure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there was no plan to take up the whole time of the debate—

Mr. Ken Hargreaves: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that the last half hour of every day is given up as very precious time for an hon. Member to raise a point and for a Minister to reply to it. I remind the House also that the Member whose Adjournment subject is tabled for Thursday night is chosen by Mr. Speaker. I hope that the House will respect that, and that right hon. and hon. Members will not interrupt the Adjournment debate with further points of order.

Mr. Ken Hargreaves: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I agree with your comments, but is it right for the House to rehearse tomorrow's tactics?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Richard Holt: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I listened carefully to your comments about the selection of Thursday night Adjournment debates. To paraphrase your remarks, you said that Mr. Speaker chooses which debate is to be selected on the basis of the right hon. or hon. Member in whose name it is. I refer you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to "Erskine May", which states that the choice has nothing to do with the right hon. or hon. Member concerned, but is made on the basis of the subject matter. In the light of that, will you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, reflect on whether it is the hon. Member who has the Floor of the House or the subject matter? Is it conceivable that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin) has the ear of Mr. Speaker, rather than the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who, apart from the fact that he makes a lot of noise, carries no special weight in the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that we may now proceed with the Adjournment debate.

Mr. Skinner: It is clear, Mr. Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Adjournment debate that concludes each day is a very special half-hour for the right hon. or hon. Member concerned, who may be from either side of the House. I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will respect the Adjournment, knowing that they may on some future occasion have that opportunity themselves.

Mr. Skinner: Mr. Deputy Speaker—

Mr. Holt: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I shall take no further points of order.

Mr. Holt: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I made it clear that I shall take no further points of order. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: One thing that is certain, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is that—

Mr. Ken Hargreaves: I beg to move, That strangers do withdraw.

Notice being taken that strangers were present, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to Standing Order No. 143 (Withdrawal of strangers from House), put forthwith the Question, That strangers do withdraw:—

The House divided: Ayes 1, Noes 46.

Division No. 101]
[12.23 am


AYES


Widdecombe, Ann
Mr. Nicholas Bennett and



Mr. Alan Amos.


Tellers for the Ayes:





NOES


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Durant, Tony


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Fallon, Michael


Bottomley, Peter
Franks, Cecil


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Gregory, Conal


Bowis, John
Ground, Patrick


Burns, Simon
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Haynes, Frank


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Hayward, Robert


Chapman, Sydney
Heathcoat-Amory, David





Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)
Sackville, Hon Tom


Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)
Skinner, Dennis


Hunt, David (Wirral W)
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Jack, Michael
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Key, Robert
Thorne, Neil


King, Roger (B'ham N'thlield)
Thurnham, Peter


Lightbown, David
Twinn, Dr Ian


McFall, John
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Maclean, David
Wells, Bowen


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Wood, Timothy


Michael, Alun
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)



Newton, Rt Hon Tony
Tellers for the Noes:


Norris, Steve
Mr. Robert G. Hughes and


Pike, Peter L.
Mr. Edward Leigh.

Question accordingly negatived.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Dennis Skinner.

Mr. Holt: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. During the six years that I have been a Member of the House there have been frequent points of order from hon. Members on both sides of the House when they have sought to place matters before the House. I spent a number of hours this afternoon in the Library reading "Erskine May", but nowhere could I find anything about the occupant of the Chair refusing to take further points of order. If you say that points of order will no longer be taken during the debate, that is a new ruling.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. What I am saying is that it is most unusual for points of order to be taken during an Adjournment debate, and I hope that the House will respect that. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
One thing is certain. There must be a good story to tell about the Labour-controlled Derbyshire county council because of the tremendous efforts that Conservative Members have made to stop the story being told.
We know only too well—

Mr. Teddy Taylor: rose—

Mr. Skinner: We know that in the course of the past 10 years the rate support grant nationally has been reduced from about 61 per cent. to 46 per cent. But in Derbyshire the picture is much more dramatic. The rate support grant has fallen from 61·9 per cent. to 37·4 per cent. That means that, in contrast with the position when Labour left office in 1979, the ratepayers of Derbyshire in all 10 constituencies have had to find £62·6 for every £100 that has been spent.
It is important that we get it on the record that rates increased generally, and in Derbyshire, because of the massive cut in the rate support grant. [HON. MEMBERS: "Tell us about Reg Race."] One reason why the rate support grant has been cut is in order to finance—[HON. MEMBERS: "What about the waste?"]—those people—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am finding it difficult to hear whether the hon. Gentleman is in order. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: I was trying to explain that one of the main reasons why rates paid by the ratepayers in the Tory-held constituencies in Derbyshire have increased rapidly is the Goverment's massive cut in rate support grant.

Mr. David Shaw: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On my calculation, half the time allowed for the Adjournment debate has gone. Surely the Minister should be invited to reply.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is a matter for the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

Mr. John Prescott: Silly twit.

Mr. Skinner: One of the reasons why—[Interruption.]

Mr. David Shaw: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have been called a silly twit by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). In all the time that I have been a Member of the House I have known the hon. Gentleman to speak up for the National Union of Seamen—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There are all sorts of remarks passed in this House. I have not heard anything that is out of order.

Mr. Skinner: I realise the problem that you have, Mr. Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have appealed to the House. It is unusual for Adjournment debates to be interrupted by points of order. Many hon. Members will hope to have Adjournment debates and to have an opportunity to put their case. I hope that the hon. Member for Bolsover will have the opportunity to put his case. Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Holt: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Skinner: I think that one of the problems you have to face, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is that most of the Tory Members have come out of the bar. They have been drinking—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. One remark from one side of the House tends to provoke another. Let us get on with the Adjournment debate.

Mr. Skinner: I was just a little concerned about the fact that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] You are having some difficulty, Mr. Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is very little time left. I hope that the House will listen to the hon. Gentleman. I want to hear whether he is in order.

Mr. Skinner: I was saying, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you are having great difficulty dealing with people this late at night. I was trying to make the point that Tory Members are trying to prevent the Derbyshire county council's Labour-controlled case from being put in the House of Commons. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] I think it is a very good case.
Hon. Members will be pleased to know that since 1981 the Labour-controlled Derbyshire county council has managed to hold the price of meals on wheels for many thousands of old age pensioners at 35p per head. It has never increased the price in those eight years. It managed to hold the price of school meals down to 45p for the junior schoolchildren and to 55p for the seniors. It is the lowest price in any shire county in Great Britain. It is a story of success against the massive cuts that this Government have carried out against the Derbyshire county council.

Mr. Robert G. Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The motion having been made after Ten o'clock on Thursday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at seventeen minutes to One o'clock.